SOUTH Somerset District Council has apologised to a former Crewkerne man after sending him a council tax bill for just 2p – although he has now just moved 16,000 miles away to live in New Zealand.

Alastair King was left bemused last week after receiving the bill just a month after moving from Crewkerne to New Zealand.

But Mr King has now received an email from the council apologising for the error.

He said: “I’d phoned the council offices to pay the remainder of my council tax bill in full before I left for New Zealand.

“I understood that I had done so under the advice of their officer.

So I found it ridiculous that the council has obviously reassessed this and gone to the expense of re-billing me in New Zealand with me notionally having to go to the expense of having to send them a cheque for 2p!”

A council spokesman told the News the 2p bill had been “automatically generated” by its computer system.

“We have confirmed by email to Mr King that the 2p has been removed from the account and apologised to the customer,” said the spokesman.

“Council tax is a daily charge and both this and discounts are calculated on a daily basis to a number of decimal places.

“The 2p bill has arisen from the way the charge and discounts interact over a period in the year resulting in a ‘rounding’ balance of 2p.”

The spokesman added: “Clearly, asking payment for such a very small amount is nonsensical and not cost effective wherever anyone lives.

“We have an automated process to deal with small balances which has failed in this case.

“We are now reviewing this process to find out what has gone wrong and prevent it happening again in the future.”

Mr King said he was happy the matter had been resolved successfully.