LEASEHOLDERS in Oxford's five towers are being reassured £50,000 repair bills that will drop through letterboxes in the coming weeks do not have to be paid yet.

A legal "technicality" ahead of a court decision on whether the charges are fair means Oxford City Council has to issue demands for payment to the 51 leaseholder households in Windrush, Evenlode, Hockmore, Plowman and Foresters Towers.

It will now only be able to apply on July 1 at the earliest for a decision by the property chambers on whether the charges - part of a £20m refurbishment - are reasonable.

The local authority has moved to reassure residents they do not expect payment, although residents told the Oxford Mail they had no intention of doing so anyway.

Councillor Mike Rowley, Board Member for Housing, said: "We are now close to our submission to the First Tier Tribunal for a determination as to whether or not the amounts we are seeking to recover from the leaseholders are payable and reasonable.

"Before we can submit our application the law requires us to have despatched demands for payment to all leaseholders and for the deadline for to have expired.

"We will be despatching letters of demand for payment to all leaseholders shortly. This is a technicality and we will not be seeking to enforce payment until such time the tribunal have considered the case and made a determination, after which we will be contacting individual leaseholders about the repayment options available to them."

The announcement has caused confusion as many leaseholders were under the impression the council had already applied to the courts, ready for a Spring tribunal.

Stefan Piechnik, a leaseholder in Plowman Tower, said: "Yesterday they told me they hadn't applied yet. This is the scenario I strongly suspected would happen.

"The tribunal will probably take about half a year to sit down, and on top of that I believe there will then be a couple of months to make the first decision. The first-tier tribunal is only the first step. I seriously have no idea what they have been doing for the last six months."

Others said they would not be fazed by the arrival of yet another letter asking for them to pay up as they had no intention of paying anyway.

Leila Stonehouse, 82, who lives with brother Walter Campbell, 84, in Evenlode Tower, said: "They are not going to get £50,000 from me. They will have to wait until the tribunal. We will have to pay something, but not £50,000."

City council spokesman Chofamba Sithole explained that due to the terms of the residents' contracts the earliest the council could have applied for a tribunal was April 1, had not been possible as the consultation on bills was going on at the time.