Our licensing team has been made aware of a licence fee scam where fraudsters are contacting premises licence holders.
The fraudsters call from a mobile phone and state they are acting on behalf of North Tyneside Council.
They advise that their licence/fee has expired and request their annual fee payment be made over the telephone.
We would not contact a licence holder to demand payment using a mobile telephone number; all annual fee payment requests are initially made by letter and follow-up reminders which detail methods by which the licence holder can contact the team to make payment.
Should there be a requirement to do so, for example when a payment is late or a correspondence address has been changed and the Licensing team has not been informed, a licence holder may be contacted by telephone to investigate.
A mobile telephone number would not be used to make this call.
If you receive a call that you believe to be fraudulent, please make no payments, instead contact our licensing team on 0191 6432175.