‘Despite being entirely exempt from council tax, I received a pile of letters’

• WILL Camden’s benefits and revenues department please dispense with the insanely bureaucratic practice of responding to all emails with templated letters?

This Kafkaesque procedure doesn’t achieve anything except confusion and infuriation when an email asking for clarification on some matter is met with three or four letters demanding money or otherwise just spewing absolutely incongruent and irrelevant nonsense.

Despite being entirely exempt from council tax, an automated error on Camden’s system over a year ago booted me out from their reduction scheme and the reinstatement of my claim still has not been concluded.

Almost every email I send is ignored and, instead, I just receive a pile of letters, one thanking me for sending evidence, one demanding I send evidence, another saying I don’t need to pay anything, and another threatening me with legal action.

I have a pile of about 15 different bills all demanding different payments on different dates and another 15 confirming I don’t need to pay anything.

Evidently these bureaucratic procedures are meant only to communicate a powerful presence, imitating the faceless might of the DWP or HMRC.

But, honestly, this isn’t working at all and only serves to make Camden Council look like the epitome of absurdity and the world’s most wasteful consumer of paper and stamps.

Please end these silly games and just get the job done. We shouldn’t have to beg for our local authority just to respond to emails in the 21st century.

OWEN WARD,
WC1