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Council tax problem - bills sent to wrong address
Hi All
I hope you can help. I owned a property which I was unable to sell so I rented it out, the tenants paid the council tax and all was fine. Unfortunately due to the pandemic and brexit my company had to close with a large number of debts partly due to me being in the Netherlands when the travel ban came in. To pay those debts I had to sell the rental house.
I sold the property in August 2022 (at which point I had been living in the Netherlands for 2 years) and my solicitor paid all the known debts. I had forgotten about council tax being a thing after being out of the country and I didn't have any postal reminders or anything so it totally slipped my mind. Fast forward to this year and my parents get a letter from debt collectors regarding the outstanding council tax on the property. I was shocked to get this since I didn't realise there was any debt on the property.
The debt agency couldn't tell me anything other than the amount so I contacted the Council directly. I received a response yesterday which states that they had been sending all correspondence to a house I sold in 2016! No reminders were sent to the property until 2024 (2 years after the sale completed and long after the Royal Mail redirection expired).
Do I have any legal standing to get the debt reduced or anything since they sent all correspondence to an address which I don't own?
I hope you can help. I owned a property which I was unable to sell so I rented it out, the tenants paid the council tax and all was fine. Unfortunately due to the pandemic and brexit my company had to close with a large number of debts partly due to me being in the Netherlands when the travel ban came in. To pay those debts I had to sell the rental house.
I sold the property in August 2022 (at which point I had been living in the Netherlands for 2 years) and my solicitor paid all the known debts. I had forgotten about council tax being a thing after being out of the country and I didn't have any postal reminders or anything so it totally slipped my mind. Fast forward to this year and my parents get a letter from debt collectors regarding the outstanding council tax on the property. I was shocked to get this since I didn't realise there was any debt on the property.
The debt agency couldn't tell me anything other than the amount so I contacted the Council directly. I received a response yesterday which states that they had been sending all correspondence to a house I sold in 2016! No reminders were sent to the property until 2024 (2 years after the sale completed and long after the Royal Mail redirection expired).
Do I have any legal standing to get the debt reduced or anything since they sent all correspondence to an address which I don't own?
