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Council tax: June Farrows would rather go to jail than pay,,,

June Farrow’s tiny, doll-like frame belies her huge reserves of grit and determination.

This week she stood, impeccably attired and implacable, in the dock at Norwich Magistrates’ Court and told the bench, with her customary courtesy, why she would not under any circumstances be paying her council tax arrears.

With the fluency of a defence lawyer, she outlined the reasons why she intends to continue challenging the inequity of the charge — by paying only a quarter of the monthly bill levied by the council on her detached rural home.

Fighting for her cause: June Farrow, from Norfolk, refuses to pay her council tax arrears

Although the court has the power to impose draconian penalties, including sending her to prison and seizing her possessions, none of this worries the redoubtable 72-year-old widow one whit.

She says: ‘The bailiffs can come if they want. I’ve got nothing left for them to take. I’ve sold my wedding ring, my engagement ring, my granny’s ring and the antique clock she left me.

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'I didn’t really worry about it; they’re only objects after all. But my home is really precious to me. It’s where I want to end my days. So I intend to stay here and fight.

‘The thought of going to prison holds no fears for me. It would help to highlight my case.’

June addressed the magistrates with equanimity. ‘You know, I wasn’t a bit frightened because I knew I had a just cause,’ she says.

Her home: June Farrow's bungalow, which is worth at least £250,000

‘And I hope I’m helping thousands of other lone pensioners who, with the rising cost of living, just can’t afford to pay punitive rates of council tax.

‘I treated the court with the greatest respect. I said: “Good afternoon, your worships.”

'I made a placard that read “Council Tax Injustice”, which I wore round my neck.

'I’d put on my make-up — blusher, pink lipstick, mascara — and I wore a black jacket with silver buttons and a scarf, because I’d ridden on my electric bike to the bus stop and it was chilly.

‘I said I wanted to highlight my plight and that of all those who live alone in their homes

‘I explained that since my husband Albert died seven years ago, like all people living singly, I’ve only had a 25 per cent reduction on my council tax.

'This seems grossly unfair. When a partner dies you should be entitled to a 50 per cent reduction.

Late husband: June with Albert Farrow before he passed away

‘The system blatantly favours homes where several adults live, especially those in multiple occupation with four, five or more residents. They each pay only a fraction of what I do.

‘For seven years I’ve managed to pay my monthly council tax bill of £99 by dipping into my savings.

'But I want to continue to live in my own home — it would break my heart to leave it.

'For that reason, for the past three months I’ve only paid £25 of my bill each month, and that’s what I shall continue to pay.

‘I told the magistrates: “It doesn’t take a macro-economist to see that I’ve been paying more council tax than is fair.”

The magistrates’ chairman thanked June for putting her case so eloquently, but said she had no discretionary power to help her.

So now June has been ordered to pay South Norfolk District Council £918.21.

The court has decreed that because of her arrears, she should settle not just what she owes, but also pay the rest of her bill in advance for the whole year.

But June has no intention of paying the full sum, believing it is a point of principle.

Standing her ground: June attended Norwich Magistrates' Court wearing a home-made sign saying 'council tax injustice'

She lives on a meagre annual state pension of just £9,600.

And because she has been judicious, thrifty and hard-working, she has savings of just over £16,000.

Her little nest egg takes her just above the threshold that would entitle her to State benefits and help with her council tax bill.

June, therefore, is one of society’s forgotten poor.

She would be better off if she spent her savings — the State would step in and help her if she did so — but she is self-sufficient and proud.

Moreover, frittering away money goes against all her instincts.

She has no intention of paying her council tax bill from the diminishing fund she has salted away so assiduously for a rainy day.

And June’s predicament is not rare. A recent report from the Office for National Statistics found that 53 per cent of single pensioners receive an income of less than £10,000 a year.

They, too, have just £27 a day to live on, a sum which does not cover the cost of their ever-escalating bills.

Hers is not a lone voice of protest. June’s arguments are endorsed by Is It Fair?, a national campaign group that seeks to reform the system for assessing council tax.

Christine Melsom, the group’s co-founder, says: ‘Mrs Farrow typifies tens of thousands of pensioners who have always worked, saved and been self-sufficient.

People like her, on low incomes, are horrified by the prospect of claiming state benefits, and they are penalised most harshly by a council tax system that is inherently unfair.’

Court appearance: June had the fluency of a defence lawyer as she outlined her reasons for not paying

June explains: ‘I’ve been told by the council that if I spent £3,000 of my savings I’d be entitled to benefits and help with my council tax.

'But I don’t want to milk the system. I prefer to retain my independence.’

There are those who have advised her to sell her home, which is worth at least £250,000, and buy a smaller property in a lower council tax band — hers is rated C — to save money.

But they do not know her, or understand about the love, sweat and toil she has invested in her house; the physical effort she expended to create the little hideaway in the countryside she calls ‘the home of my dreams’.

She and Albert met at a dance in Norwich. Albert, handsome in his Royal Navy uniform, told June: ‘I’ve never seen anyone lovelier.’

They were married in 1950 and managed to save £450 to buy a four-acre plot in the village of Bawburgh just outside Norwich in 1960.

‘It was divine; our little patch of paradise,’ she says.

On the land they parked a caravan and June sketched out her plan for their ideal home.

Each night after work she cooked supper then started working on it.

She is just 4ft 11in tall and weighs 7st, yet she carted bricks in barrows.

She mixed mortar. The toil was hard and remorseless — ‘We worked our fingers to the bone,’ she says — and they strove for perfection.

It took five years for Albert and June to finish their building project, and when she took up residence in her three-bedroom home in 1965, she could not contain her excitement.

‘I felt like a little girl who had been given the keys to a life-size doll’s house,’ she says, her eyes lighting up with glee at the memory.

Neither she nor Albert, who had no children, ever earned much money.

But by being thrifty, they made their modest wages stretch a long way.

Albert’s main job was maintaining electricity meters, but he also helped out in a friend’s garage. When I ask June what jobs she has had, she rolls her eyes and says, ‘Let’s see . . . there have been so many!’

Often, she held down two at a time. After she married, she employed her secretarial skills in office work and supplemented her wage with waitressing.

She is an accomplished seamstress and for a while she worked with a milliner, hand-sewing beadwork and piping on to fancy designer hats.

She also turned her hand to property management, and later worked as an auxiliary nurse in a care home for the elderly.

Now, of course, she is elderly herself. Although she says she is in ‘perfect’ health and remains spry and active, she knows the time will come when both she, and her home, will need help.

‘The house is 50 years old now and maintenance work needs to be done. I paint all the windows myself with wood preservative, but I can’t reach the guttering and I don’t want to climb up a ladder as there’s no one around if I fall.’

The interior of her house, freeze-framed in Sixties and Seventies style, is a monument to a passing era — and her frugality.

She still uses her antiquated twin-tub washing machine, a relic from the early days of her marriage, and her G Plan dining chairs were bought four decades ago.

Since Albert’s death from deep vein thrombosis, her modest income diminished to a pauper’s stipend: her State old age pension is supplemented by £2,000 a year from her late husband’s pension.

Outside, the garden has run to seed. June admits it is too much for her to tend all of it now, although she does her best to keep it in hand.

She can’t possibly afford even a casual gardener.

Frugality, long-engrained, has become her byword. She outlines her economies: ‘In the winter I rarely have the central heating on. I sit in my little office with my Calor gas stove.

‘I have my own water supply — pumped from a bore hole in the garden — and I only heat it when I need to. I go to the supermarket on my bike and stock up on food for the freezer; the pannier holds £60 worth.

‘I look for the bargains. I haven’t bought a joint of meat since Albert was alive. I freeze plums, apples and cherries from the trees in my garden for dessert and I make my own wine from them.

‘I don’t go out in the evenings, because it’s too dangerous to ride along the country lane in the dark, and I don’t have a social life because it’s far, far too costly. I’d love to go to events at the museum in Norwich but they cost such a lot. So I settle for reading or the TV.’

She says she never feels lonely and has no thoughts of marrying again; she and Albert had a happy life together and now he’s gone, her nine-year-old Alsatian Sheba is all the company she needs.

June cared for Albert, who was 79 when he died, during the dark days of his last illness.

Before too long, she may need help herself, but she hopes to remain self-sufficient. Above all, she never wants to be parted from her home.

‘It would feel like the end of my life if I had to leave this house,’ she says.

‘You don’t know how much I love it. To wake in the morning and look out of the window and see how beautiful it is.’

She gestures to the view over distant fields. ‘I’d like to end my days here. Is it too much to ask for my council tax to be reduced so I can afford to stay in the place that I love?’





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