Town Hall admits to causing ‘stress and confusion’ over council tax bills

Resident Danielle Collavino said the council’s conduct ‘undermines our trust in institutions’. Photograph: Redouane Chaouki

Hackney Council has admitted to causing “stress and confusion” over a resident’s council tax arrears following system changes after the 2020 cyber attack.

After a lengthy back-and-forth, during which staff told the resident the Town Hall’s systems were a “complete mess”, officers revealed they had moved her previous council tax payments to the wrong year.

The council previously said the discrepancies that Danielle Collavino had spotted in her tax bill and raised with them were “unrelated to any lost records due to the cyber attack”.

In April, the local authority admitted her payments were reallocated in its system “post-cyber attack”.

The two-year dispute began when Ms Collavino was sent an outstanding tax bill in 2023 covering the previous three years.

Like others, she had not received any correspondence about her debt since the council was hacked by cyber criminals in 2020.

Ms Collavino had difficulty accessing her council tax information online, but carried on making regular payments to the council.

Disputing the amount the Town Hall had quoted her for that period, she provided bank statements and council-issued tax receipts, but said she was “stonewalled”.

While agreeing to a repayment plan for some of the debt, she contacted the council to discuss the discrepancies.

After phone calls were repeatedly cut off, she went to the Town Hall in late May but was told council tax matters were only dealt with over the phone.

The next day, phone operators told her the council’s records were a “complete mess” and advised her to visit the council’s offices to go through her documentation.

In a later phone call, after being cut-off once again, she was threatened with legal action if she did not pay the amount quoted.

Ms Collavino then contacted the Hackney mayor’s office.

The mayor’s representative apologised for the “regrettable” service she had received,  but reinforced the council’s figures.

She then enquired with her local councillor, Liam Davis (Green, Stoke Newington), who reviewed her documents and calculated less was owed than had been quoted.

In February, Cllr Davis approached the Town Hall about the inconsistencies, asking whether the cyber attack had impacted council tax record-keeping.

He was told each payment had been “appropriately allocated and this issue was unrelated to any lost records during the cyber attack”.

The council added that Ms Collavino would “be able to obtain proof of any unaccounted-for payments directly from the bank”, despite not recognising her bank statements as official evidence for its own accounting throughout the dispute.

Officers asked her to pay as soon as possible, otherwise they would apply further “recovery costs” to her account.

Cllr Davis requested a full review of the missing payments, which the Assistant Director of Revenues granted.

Hackney Service Centre. Photograph: Julia Gregory

In April, the council stated for the first time that it had checked payments against her evidence and found that four payments, amounting to £568, had been reallocated by the council’s system – “post the cyber attack” – to the incorrect year.

The officer apologised for the “confusion that occured due to the payment allocation”.

Ms Collavino told the Citizen: “In the two years I’d been working with the council to resolve this, not once did they tell me that bills were changing because they had moved my payments from the usual April-April period to calendar years.

“They only communicated the new billing cycle periods after I kept chasing them to ask why I still had amounts owing as I had evidence to prove the previous written bills were paid.”

While still disputing the outstanding debt, Ms Collavino said she will pay it so she can draw a line under the episode.

“I just want this all to be over,” she said. “I have felt helpless and frightened, particularly when the council have threatened legal action despite my many attempts to work with them.

“Hackney Council have treated me terribly; their behaviour undermines our trust in institutions.

“If you’ve experienced the same issue because of the cyber attack, please come forward so our voices are heard. Let’s hold our council to account.”

Cllr Davis told the Citizen the council is yet to provide a full list of the payments she has made.

“Residents shouldn’t have to navigate a bureaucratic maze or retrieve year-old bank records just to fix errors or confusion created by the council’s own systems,” he said.

“It’s deeply worrying that, despite Danielle’s persistence in proving what she had already paid for particular years, she could have been taken to court due to the council’s confusing payment allocations after the cyber attack.

“They failed to acknowledge her payment records for over a year, when bank statements and the council’s own receipts were provided.

“Only much later did they U-turn and acknowledge that, following the cyber attack, allocating payments across multiple different years had caused confusion.”

A Hackney Council spokesperson said the local authority “deeply regretted” the impact of the “senseless, criminal cyber attack” on residents.

“But we are clear that no council tax payments were lost as a result, and no resident has been asked to make payments above what they are liable for,” the spokesperson said.

“However, we appreciate the stress and confusion caused by the way Ms Collavino’s payments were allocated, and the need for her to provide proof of her payments to allow us to check that her account is up to date.

“We have worked closely with Ms Collavino to review her account in detail, and can confirm that all the payments she made have been correctly applied to her account.”

The Town Hall maintained there was “no evidence” its tax records were inaccurate, and asked any resident who had made council tax payments “not reflected by their notices” to contact its services.

The Citizen asked why the Ms Collavino’s bank statements or receipts were not recognised as evidence on several occasions, but the Town Hall did not provide an answer.

The 2020 cyber attack impacted 440,000 files, affecting at least 280,000 residents along with council staff.

As of January 2025, the local authority was still addressing the damage to its systems, which has so far cost £13m.

3 Comments

  1. john anthony on Thursday 10 July 2025 at 00:45

    Residents should keep all their Council tax receipts because it is not impossible that the Council will try to charge you twice for the same period using threats of legal action.



  2. Daragh on Monday 21 July 2025 at 18:21

    I'm experiencing exactly this right now. Bailiffs letters, threats of prosecution and full re ords of payments presented multiple times. It's a total shambles.



  3. john anthony on Tuesday 22 July 2025 at 00:35

    It is either a sign of rank incompetence or a desperate bid to put the frighteners on residents (in the hope that some of them will cave in) to extract money to cover up their gross financial mismanagement.



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