A homeowner has blasted his housing association for chasing him over a 6p ‘debt’. Edward Kettle, 81, regularly pays Southern Housing Group a service charge for the upkeep of the grounds in his residential street, reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
He typically pays £56.56, but was blindsided when he was sent a letter informing him that he had not paid the correct amount.
Mr Kettle said: “It basically said, you owe us 6p, and if you don’t pay us in the next seven days they would go to my mortgage lender for payment. If that isn't bullying, what is?”
Mr Kettle, of Lingwood, Bracknell, Berkshire, has agreed to pay the 6p outstanding. He said: ”I was going to pay them by cheque.”
In jest, he added: “I’m tempted to charge them for posting the cheque as well!”
Southern Housing has said the bill was "automatically generated" and apologised.
A spokesperson said: “We agree that issuing a demand for such a trivial amount can look a bit silly. Small kinks in the system such as this occasionally occur when statements are automatically generated.
“In this instance, we have apologised to the resident for any alarm caused but hope that everyone can agree that once we saw what had happened, we were only ever going to take a common-sense approach to resolving this.”
