Attachment of earnings

[alshaz1982]

hey... so due to personal reasons (caring for my terminally ill mum for the last year) we have beem slightly oblivious to bills etc as her health had taken priority.. anyway we now have been sent an attachment of earnings from council tax for both 2017 and 2018... (didnt help that we had to take an £8500 paycut in 2016 as the company closed. So we have been struggling tbh since)

so this AOE... my employer has this week received it and i have too... says 12% of net earnings and because there are 2 seperate ones, it means 24% of my wages pretty much to be taken next month.... this is going to put us in even worse debt with everything else and with children we just cannot afford for them to be taking this much... is there a way to get out of it at all??

am dreading the weeks ahead. My mother passed away a few weeks ago and now have this over my head too.

Any help would be so so appreciated please.

[ploddertom]

There is no way to stop an AOE once it is set up, but if it is going to cause hardship then you can appeal to the Council but probably the best you can hope for is they will drop the 2nd one temporarily. You may well be paying 12% on the first order but by the time this is taken from your earnings it leaves less money available for them to take for the second one so you may only see a reduction of 7%, 5% or lower. Don't forget it is dependent on how much you earn - less allowances - so any overtime you may work may increase what they take. Possibly better this way than Bailiffs at the door.

[ploddertom]

Here's a calculator that may help you, most Councils operate similar, remember to choose 2 when you get to Deductions

http://www.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk/en..._earnings.aspx

[lgfa92]

As mentioned the decision regarding implementing and withdrawing Attachment Orders is down to the council - if they don't want to play ball and want to keep both in place then there's not a lot you can do.

Where there's two liability orders then they can issue the Attachment Order per liability order (max 2 in place at any one time). What will happen is that the first order will be calculated and this money will be deducted from your earnings, the second order will then be calculated on the amount that is left. The % that is taken is set in law so all English councils will work on the same rates.


If one of the Attachment Orders is for this year then it's unlikely that the order for this year would be withdrawn unless you could offer a payment arrangement that would still clear the current year within a reasonable time - generally speaking when I would issue Attachment Orders then (even where two could be issued) only one would be issued if the person was paying the current year. If the person wasn't paying the current year then, where possible two Attachment of Earnings Orders would be issued. This is pretty much standard across local authority enforcement.

If two Attachment Orders were issued and someone then offered a payment arrangement for one of the balances then we would withdrawn one of the Attachment Orders on condition that the payment arrangement was stuck to - this would be done as long as the offer was reasonable, even if less than the Attachment amount.