Another quagmire of bureaucracy for those who don't pay Council Tax by direct debit, another quagmire mostly affecting those in most need of help.

Why they can't simply credit £150 to every account entitled to a rebate, reduce the problem cases to just those where Council Tax isnt actually paid I don't know. Other than they have chosen to make it as difficult as possible to claim.

To claim one needs to have access to email, has to hand over an email address to a third party commercial business, has to allow a credit check by another third party business, has to provide bank and other information which could be used for fraud.

The application form appears to be only available in English and even then the confirmation questions are perverse, demanding freeform answers without a hint of what is expected. Some error on needing to be less than 5 but more than 2 characters long, so one would presume "yes" but that is not accepted in others. It's almost as if they are trying to elicit 'not suitable' answers so they can deny the application.

If it's this hard just to get £150 credited to a Council Tax account which could have been done automatically for everyone, it's not surprising Ukrainian refugees are having a tough time.

Getting help from this government is like getting blood from a stone.

And it's how it is by design.

On Tue, 19 Apr 2022 14:21:02 +0100
The Happy Hippy <the.happy.hippy.nntp@ntlworld.invalid> wrote:

> Another quagmire of bureaucracy for those who don't pay Council Tax
> by direct debit, another quagmire mostly affecting those in most need
> of help.
>
> Why they can't simply credit £150 to every account entitled to a
> rebate, reduce the problem cases to just those where Council Tax isnt
> actually paid I don't know. Other than they have chosen to make it as
> difficult as possible to claim.
>
> To claim one needs to have access to email, has to hand over an email
> address to a third party commercial business, has to allow a credit
> check by another third party business, has to provide bank and other
> information which could be used for fraud.
>
> The application form appears to be only available in English and even
> then the confirmation questions are perverse, demanding freeform
> answers without a hint of what is expected. Some error on needing to
> be less than 5 but more than 2 characters long, so one would presume
> "yes" but that is not accepted in others. It's almost as if they are
> trying to elicit 'not suitable' answers so they can deny the
> application.
>
> If it's this hard just to get £150 credited to a Council Tax account
> which could have been done automatically for everyone, it's not
> surprising Ukrainian refugees are having a tough time.
>
> Getting help from this government is like getting blood from a stone.
>
> And it's how it is by design.

And it just keeps getting worse.

The on-line processing party say they need documents uploading when most people won't have the means to do that, and the local council says they don't need them. Which is just as well as the processing party doesn't say what documents should be uploaded.

Plus the local council can't access the property reference it's been given.

After multiple calls, being repeatedly held in queues because they are inundated with calls and emails for assistance, I finally got the people doing the actual data processing to call me back.

Apparently I'm all sorted, though they did admit they had no way to tell people their application had been accepted or rejected, have gone away to think on that. Seems I was one of the easier cases for them to resolve and it's created a whole raft of problems it didn't need to.

Pointless bureaucracy is what Britain does best, excels at. Whether it's ensuring Ukrainians can't get in, illegally throwing out immigrants who are entitled to be here, failing to pay compensation to wrongly convicted Post Office staff, or preventing people claiming money they are entitled to; this government always goes the extra mile.

People complained about "EU red tape" but it's nothing compared to what this government comes up with.

Having to provide ID to vote is going to be the next bureaucratic nightmare I would guess.