While there is no excuse for Brighton and Hove City Council not collecting council tax because of problems with direct debits, mistakes will always occur, so why the people affected believe the rest of us should subsidise them because of these errors is a mystery to me.

Can anyone really claim not to notice that sums of money in the order of £100 or more a month are not being debited from their bank account?

And do these intelligent people really expect us to believe they don't check their bank statements?

Do not forget that these people have had the benefit of having £700 or more in their accounts for a year, presumably earning interest. If they intended for the payments to be taken and assumed they had been, the money must still be there.

After all, they haven't been checking their bank statements so how would they know they had surplus cash to splash?

-Marion Tuck, Dyke Road, Brighton