INDEX	May 3, 2001
Bailiffs threaten to break the law
Jonathan Brind, 519 Lea Bridge Road, London E10 7EB Phone 020 8558 5527/ email j@brind.co.uk It is Thursday and it is my destiny to bludgeon a man, possibly several, with an iron bar. I have nothing against the man who is going to be lying on the floor of my flat in a pool of blood. He, like me, is the victim of a cruel and incompetent council. To explain, two years ago a woman lived in the first floor flat at 519 Lea Bridge Road, Leyton, let us call her Miss D Bartlett, for that was her name. She too was a victim. In her case she was for some reason homeless and so Waltham Forest Council leased the first floor of 519 Lea Bridge Road in order to give her emergency accommodation. I don't know if she was happy here. I hope she was but I doubt it. Towards the end of her stay in the flat the ceiling collapsed. Perhaps the council moved her elsewhere, perhaps she found something for herself. All I know is she left. I first visited the flat nearly two years ago. It was completely empty and had clearly been so for many weeks, perhaps months. It took a long time to buy the flat and then make it ready to live in. I finally moved in a little over a year ago and I have been paying council tax ever since. I can provide documents issued by the council with my name on top as the person who lives in the first floor flat at 519 Lea Bridge Road. Yet the council has sent the bailiffs round to warn me that they intend to break into my flat and take my property away, even if I am not there. The reason? Despite the fact that they know I live here and pay council tax, the council believes Miss Bartlett, the lady who used to live here, owes them £634.30 of council tax. Miss Bartlett almost certainly does not owe that amount. She was probably on benefits so her council tax would have been paid automatically while she lived in my flat. As soon as she left and the flat was empty she would have had no liability to pay council tax. But the council benefits by falsely claiming that people like Miss Bartlett owe council tax. They can often multiply sums of funny council tax many times, gaining all sorts of grants and subsidies on the strength of fictional debts. Such is the murky world of council finances. The bailiffs are called Newlyn Collection Services and have given me a mobile phone number of one Harry Grimsdale (07947 687097). It will be Harry, or one of his fellow workers, who will be lying in a pool of blood, should he be foolish enough to carry out his threat to break into my house. My partner, Katy Andrews, tried to ring Harry but all she got was an answer machine. Harry sounds like a bruiser, a real east end thug. I guess it goes with the job. Not content with risking our future happiness on Harry's ability to tell a genuine story when he hears it on his answer machine, I went round to Leyton Police Station to see if the police would protect us. They suggested we send a recorded delivery letter to the council. When we explained that the council had known for a year I lived here, not Miss Bartlett, and even a year's knowledge had made no difference, the police said they were just giving advice. I explained to WPC JC298 that it was not advice we needed. We had been threatened with burglary, a criminal offence. We needed protection. She was doing the best she could, and so that was that. Back to the iron bar. But the visit to the police station was instructive. We found a woman named Mrs Nafees Ali and her brother, who had just been beaten up by a bailiff. Mrs Ali's husband had made the mistake of committing a road tax offence so the authorities had sent round the bailiffs. Mrs Ali's husband had left her to bring up her children on her own. But the lazy officials did not bother to track him down. Mrs Ali, who lives near the King Harold Pub, Leyton High Road, was a much easier target. The bailiffs had distressed Mrs Ali's 11 year old daughter, who had phoned her uncle who lives nearby. He had come running round to protect the girl. It happened that two years ago a con artist had pulled a scam on the Alis, bursting into the premises and stealing property without giving an identity card. Like the con artists, the bailiff provided the terrified children with no identity cards. The uncle wanted to protect the child. Like me, he's a big guy, and the bailiffs were clearly frightened. They thumped him. "My kids have been put through a trauma, there was blood all over the place and my kids screaming," said Mrs Ali. The bailiffs are not going to get the chance to hit me first. I will use reasonable force to stop them breaking into my flat. And if the bailiffs don't turn up, it will be a wasted day. Will the council pay? Only if the people of Waltham Forest tell them to stop behaving like a bunch of gangsters. The law may give them the power to behave like thugs, but it is the voters of Waltham Forest who actually let them do it. Jo Brind
INDEX Jonathan Brind		May 3, 2001