A growing band of pensioners who are prepared to go to jail rather than pay their council tax will challenge local authorities again this year.

Richard Fitzmaurice is the latest in a long line of council tax “martyrs”. The 76-year-old former soldier was released last week after being imprisoned for refusing to pay the £1,359 that he owed on his Band D detached home in the village of Heacham, Norfolk. He had been led from the court in handcuffs. After he had served three days of his 34-day sentence for “wilful refusal” to pay, his family paid the money.

It was his second stay in prison after a refusal to pay in 2006.

Mr Fitzmaurice says that his battle with King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council is not a personal crusade, but one on behalf of struggling pensioners.

“I’m not doing this for me specifically,” Mr Fitzmaurice said. “I don’t wish to pay my council tax, but I can afford to. But there are many old-age pensioners who are as not as well off as I am, who cannot keep facing these increases.”

He admits that next time his fight will stop before the prison gates: “For my family’s sake, I said I wouldn’t go to prison again. That doesn’t mean to say I’m going to pay it.

“They’re going to push me right to the point of a sentence, and then I will pay it.”

Walter Stanisforth, 71, a retired labourer of Swinefleet, East Yorkshire, faced jail after refusing to pay part of his council tax for the past two years. His £484 debt was paid off anonymously before he was jailed but he says that he will still refuse to pay the full tax.

“I’ve got more going out in bills, then I’m getting back in my pension,” Mr Stanisforth said. “Where do they think we’ll be able to get the money for the council tax from?”

Another tax martyr who intends to rejoin the battle is Sylvia Hardy, 75, a retired social worker from Exeter. In 2005, she was jailed for two days after refusing to pay £53.71 from her council tax bill.

“It cost more to send me to jail,” she said.

Ms Hardy said that her dire financial situation this year will force her to refuse to pay part of her council tax bill again.

“Pensioners have come to the point that some people are having to decide whether to keep their homes or eat. They cannot do both,” Ms Hardy said.

“Though I’m not in that situation, I certainly cannot pay all my bills, and the one that I have decided I will not pay if I am short of money in any month is the council tax, because that is so unfair.”

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