Whoops!: the plaintive message from Sutton Council, on its website this morning. The missed payments could leave a big hole in the authority’s budgets
INSIDE SUTTON: It’s a case of ‘Compooter say “No!”,’ as ROSE HILL reports from Sutton Civic Centre on the latest spectacular omnishambles at the LibDem-controlled council
Paying twice: Sutton’s residents are being asked to sort out the council’s own mess
Residents in Sutton are being asked to pay their latest instalment of Council Tax a second time, after the local authority’s payments system went into meltdown at the weekend. The council is blaming “human error” at their bank, Lloyds.
No one will actually have to pay double. It’s just that the council failed to take any payments for a five-day period over last weekend.
The end of the month and the start of the month are typically when the vast majority of people arrange their automated bank payments for regular bills, such as Council Tax. It seems that for five days, from May 29 to June 2, Sutton Council’s bank system was refusing to accept any money, for payments for rent, licences or Council Tax.
According to a message posted on Sutton Council’s website this morning, “If you attempted to make a payment to the council between Thursday 29 May and Monday 2 June, please check your bank account to confirm the transaction was successful.
“Due to a technical issue, some payments may have been rejected. If your payment was not processed, please make another attempt. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
But the payments system outage could amount to a lot worse than an “inconvenience”.
According to Sutton Council’s own figures, they anticipated collecting £135million in Council Tax this financial year. So, even at a conservative estimate, they may have refused payments of at least £10million over last weekend, leaving a massive hole in the council’s cashflow.
For 2025-2026, a typical, Band D household would pay £227 in Council Tax in 10 payments over the course of the year.
Black mark for the black horse: Sutton are blaming their bank
Some council sources have today expressed serious concern that if households haven’t made their May or June Council Tax payments, through no fault of their own, Sutton Council might still pass on their details to a debt collection agency and so their credit ratings will also take a serious knock.
The “digitally excluded”, mostly older residents who are not on the interweb and don’t own the latest model of smartphone, or poorer residents who can’t afford an internet connection, are most at risk of such unforeseen consequences of the latest Sutton Council omnishambles, simply because they’d have no way of knowing that their payments had not gone through.
Sources at Sutton Civic Centre confirm that opposition councillors, from the Conservatives, Labour and independent groups, were given no advance warning of the clusterfuck at the Liberal Democrat-controlled council.
It wasn’t until lunchtime today, June 5, that the council’s director of finance, Victoria Goddard (no, not Vicky Pollard), wrote to councillors with the dire news.
“There has been a problem with receiving payments into the council’s bank account over the last weekend,” Goddard wrote, in a Sutton Council version of “Compooter say ‘No!'”
Nuffink to do with me: Sutton’s finance director Victoria Goddard
“It is now resolved,” Goddard advised, “but anyone who made a payment into our account over the weekend may have seen their payment rejected. Where this happens, the payment is simply returned to their bank account.”
Goddard sought to pass the buck for this payment outage to the council’s bank.
“The issue was caused by human error by staff at the bank, which meant a temporary block was placed on our account preventing any payments made by standing order or faster payments being processed.”
And Goddard told councillors that, “Payments are now being received correctly”, adding that debt reminder notices have been “paused” for a few days (Goddard failed to state how long).
“A few days won’t be long enough for some of our residents,” a council insider told Inside Sutton. “I know some of the pensioners in my ward only check their bank statements once every couple of months, when they pay a visit to their branch. Many don’t have banking apps or a smartphone.”
Goddard’s buck-passing message to councillors concluded: “Unfortunately this issue was completely outside the control of the council and so we were reliant on Lloyds to correct the issue, which they did on Monday morning.
“We have logged a formal complaint with Lloyds and reintereated our concern that this has caused confusion and inconvenience both for the council and our residents.”
Sutton Council was approached for comment, but had not responded by time of publication. Perhaps someone at Lloyds has cut off their email?
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Keep up the pressure until we find out who was responsible. I have no inside knowledge, but my bet would be on the bank. In which case they should owe the residents of Sutton some form of financial compensation. Perhaps reopening a branch? Oh sorry that was a stupid idea wasn’t it.🤣
‘had not responded by time of publication’ – you expect competence from helen failey?
Of course not.