A RETIRED priest who, since 2013, has refused to pay his council tax, has been issued with a liability order by Haringey Council.

The priest, the Revd Paul Nicolson, has argued that residents who do not pay council tax, or are late in paying it, are being over-charged by the council, and that many of them cannot afford to pay the tax, let alone court costs (News, 12 August 2016).

Appearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on Thursday of last week, he said that his refusal to pay council tax was “civil disobedience in solidarity with everyone in the UK suffering mental or physical ill-health due to inadequate incomes and debt. . . Rents and council-tax enforcement are burning up the lowest incomes needed for food, fuel, clothes, and transport.”

After the order was issued, he said that the magistrate had also issued liability orders plus costs issued against 510 Haringey residents by signing a computer printout. He said that it was a small number compared with the national figure, and that the vast majority of those issued in the UK were “by computer against local people who can never afford to pay the tax because their benefit incomes have been shredded by central government”.

Failure to contact the council on receiving a liability order can result in the dispatch of bailiffs.