Letter: Council tax changes waste our money

Letter: Four years ago an elderly widow asked for my help. She had been threatened with court action for non-payment of her local government tax.

She could not make any sense of this because for six years she had had the same routine and she had never missed a payment.

Towards the end of each month, when she received her widow's pension from her husband's ex-employer, she went straight to the post office and paid her council tax.

When I investigated this problem I found that the problem wasn't her; it was a change in the system at Telford & Wrekin.

The, then, newly-installed computer programme informed the debt collectors that there had been a non-payment for that month if you had not paid by 27th of the month!

The staff at Telford & Wrekin were very helpful when I explained the problem and we were able to solve the problem.

But until then the elderly widow had been frightened of being sent to jail even though she had paid her bills.

I was mildly irritated at the time, but if I had known then what I know now I would have been very, very angry indeed.

I now know that at the same time other council officers had not collected the £500 per month rent (payable in advance) that Telford Stage School had agreed to pay for the use of Dawley Town Hall.

There appears to be no record of any person in authority giving legal authorisation for the lease agreement to be ignored.

Group amnesia appears to have struck those involved and, no one is held responsible.

And now we are to pay for a luxury office block in the Telford Town Centre so that these council officers can throw away our hard-earned money in comfort.

This is a good example of "employment apartheid".

It is two different worlds - those who work to earn a living and then those who are officers on the public payroll.

Councillor Denis Allen

Park Ward, Telford