Community Charge

I am on the local community committee, as secretary and general distributer of information to our 83 members. Each community (urbanisation) has to have by law an organisation committee and again by law some Spanish administrators to help you in meeting the local law requirements.

The Urbanisation has a common swimming pool, recreational area, private road and internal lighting. All need maintenance and payment for water and electricity. So we have a budget each year set at an AGM. All 83 properties have to pay 1/83^rd of this budget, however at least 25% are behind, some individuals have never paid over the 4 years and owe over 1,000 Euros.

So in 2009 our first action was to get rid of the administrators and appoint new ones with a specific mandate of getting the money from these people. The old administrators had no decent records so the committee have spent a lot of time getting 83 addresses, not only our address in Spain but addresses in England, Scotland, Eire and N. Ireland and one in Denmark.

Without these addresses the Administrators could not send out demands. The whole process is slow in Spain and the procedure has to be followed exactly. So far we have recovered 2,000 + Euros but are now taking those who live in Spain full time to court. Everybody signed up to pay these legal fees but now some don’t want to. They never thought it would go to court but it’s going unless they pay up.