A woman was told she owed Sefton Council £1,600 in unpaid council tax for a house she didn't live in.
Sophie Kelly-Sullivan, from Bootle, was notified she had a "final notice" by her mum's former neighbour, despite the fact she didn't live in the house. Following the death of her mum on March 15, a new family has moved into the home on Ruskin Close in Bootle. Sophie bought a house of her own and the 24-year-old fmoved out of her mum's house on March 15, the same day the 60-year-old died in hospital after a short battle with illness.
By default the council named Sophie as the sole occupier of the property and failed to pick up that a new tenant had in fact moved into the Regenda Homes owned house. Sophie told the ECHO: "They had been sending letters to my mum's house which were being redirected to my neighbour and I wasn't aware of any of these until my brother went to pick them up.
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"I managed to speak to the council yesterday but they were putting a lot of the blame onto me about the bill. I had to tell them that I don't even live at the property anymore and they said they had got my email about me moving out but because I didn't tell them the date I moved out they put all the blame on me.
"But if they needed further information and were chasing me, why didn't they follow anything up rather than just sending letters? I was just trying to grieve for my mum."
Prior to her dispute with Sefton Council, Sophie had to deal with Regenda Homes, who own her mum's former house. The company had told her and her brother that they had to move their mum's things out of the house within a week of telling them that their mum had died.
After she managed to move her mum's belongings out of the house she was then faced with this incident with Sefton Council. She added: "Obviously Regenda and the council didn't communicate at all. There's been another family in that house for a couple of months who will be paying council tax and I'm just in shock that Sefton Council didn't know that when I was on the phone with them. I don't get how they didn't know."
Sophie has now managed to resolve the dispute, with Sefton Council clearing the debt. A spokesperson for Sefton Council told the ECHO: “We understand what a difficult time it is after losing a family member.
"In this instance, we made contact with Ms Kelly to express our sympathy on her loss and to explain that the Council Tax bill would now be issued in Ms Kelly name as our records stated that Ms Kelly was resident at the property. Once we received correspondence from Ms Kelly that this was not the case, we updated our records, cancelled the bill and apologised for any distress caused. We would like to reiterate that apology for any stress that was caused.”
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