Council Tax refunds issued following systems error

29 April 2024

Refunds have been issued to around 15,000 residents in the Northampton area today (Monday, 29 April) whose monthly Council Tax payment was taken out twice due to an automatic systems error. 

West Northamptonshire Council is urging those affected to check they have received the refund which will be in their bank account by the end of today.

They should not try to cancel their direct debit instruction or claim the sum back via their banks as doing so could result in them having to repay the refund back to the Council.

On Friday WNC were made aware of and took immediate action to address an automation error in the system hosted by its BACS supplier, meaning that monthly Council Tax payments would be taken twice from 15,558 bank accounts today (Monday, 29 April).

A refund has been issued by the Council to all affected bank accounts, so residents whose payments were taken twice do not need to do anything except await the credit from WNC.

We are sincerely sorry for the inconvenience and distress this error may have caused residents affected.

Residents affected by this error should see three entries going through their account today (Monday 29 April) – this is two entries taking the Council Tax payment and one entry providing a refund. The result of these three transactions means the correct payment will have been made to the Council.

We would ask anyone who has been affected by this issue to check their account and wait for the refund to be paid, which will have happened by the end of the day.

We can confirm there is no action residents need to take nor do they need to contact us but we thank them for bearing with us and for their patience and understanding whilst we resolve this issue.Martin Henry, Executive Director for Finance

The error has affected 15,558 accounts, equating to around 8% of the 184,683 total number of Council Tax accounts across West Northamptonshire.