Council Tax Cost Cutting: reduce your band and grab any discounts Discussion Area

nellshortis

Can I get my band lowered if i rent? I'm sure my band is too high - i have compared my 1 bed to the neighbours and one is paying less for the same size. I don't really have much contact with my landlord so can't really find out about the price of the property. Any ideas?

CSL_2

It does not matter if you own the property or are renting it. All that matters is that you are the one who is currently paying the Council Tax. The most difficult part as you will see, by looking through hundred of Posts on this site, is trying to convince the VOA (an executive agency of HM Revenue and Customs) that the property that you are living in, is wrongly banded.

Just for fun look now at http://Polltax.co.uk

On Tuesday, go through a few hundred Posts on this site, and everything will become clear.

Good Luck!!

CSL
Monday 14th January 2008

turningbranch

I've been lucky enough to follow martin's advice and recieve £1800 refund on my council tax by challenging my banding. The Council was kind enough to provide an itemised list of the over payments for the last 10 years. This allowed me to work out a compounded interest figure of approx £1000 based on 8% interest, as if i had placed the money into a decent savings account. I've phoned and written to the local Council (Kirklees) asking for this interest to be paid back to me.

Thier reply was as follows:- "There is no provision within the legislation for council tax to award interest when calculating valuation band reductions, therefore there are no grounds for appeal." they go on to suggest " that if you feel there should be and amendment to the legislation then you will need to lobby yor MP to have the legislation changed"

This sounds to me to be nothing more than evasive bull.

What i would like to know is " as anybody else come across this excuse? , and as anybody managed to obtain interest payments on council tax rebates?

PS. Sorry for the long winded thread

Sambuca

I Had a day off work last Monday and sat down with myMSE email and looked into where I could save money. I checked my council tax banding I am group E I checked the 5 houses either side of me they are all grop D so I phoned the valuation office and am now waiting (and to be honest expecting ) my new lower banding to be given to me.
Also I changed my TV B/Band and Phone package with Virgin Media, I had all calls to landlines free 24/7, XL tv package and 8Mb B/Band costing £58.00 per month. The first two are the same but I changed the B/Band to 2Mb and this now costs me £38.00 per month (I cant say I have noticed any difference in the speed)
If the Couincil Tax banding is changed and with the saving on my tv/phone and b/band package I reckon I will have saved about £650.00 this year thanks to Martins advice. If I could save that much money everytime I tok a day off work I would have a lot more days off work.
Thanks again Martin.

Sam

Angel11_2

Not a rebanding story.

I went through a phrase where I didn't look at the bills. Assumed I had the single person's 25% reduction each year. Last couple of years I noticed I hadn't - change of personal circumstances, losing my daughter ect I didn't chase up the council about this.

I don't really keep paperwork so can't work out how long I would have been paying the full bill for. Am I able to go back to my old council and get all my previous years bills and claim back the 25%.

Is there a time limit to these claims?

Many thanks
Angel

vivatifosi

I'm told by my neighbour that following off the back of my VOA tribunal success that they have now made a successful appeal too.

We sat down together and built a case off the back of mine, but using additional info that I didn't have at the time of my appeal, plus specific detail relating to their house as every case will be a little different, even with two identical house models. It's a lot of hard work and research, and we've now got another two valid cases waiting in the wings to launch, with more to follow. Hopefully the VOA will decide to reband before we pay yet more tribunal visits (there are 30 of us in total, some of which were already correctly banded), but for now, we're all very happy!

Three bits of feedback that may be useful:

One thing that we have worked on for both tribunals, and found very useful, was to take the VOA data from the council tax banding website (type of house, effective date, band etc) and then download the data from the free house prices websites from 2000 onwards onto the same spreadsheet, with a line per house address. Into this we back entered the sales values from the local papers for 1991 to 2000 (this takes some additional research to identify), the sq m of the houses (from the VOA when you ask them for the info) and any actual house price details from the VOA that you ask for to challenge them with.

This way you have a total history of the houses that you are using in your appeal, in a useful format and can show both the actual pricing at AVD date (ie April 1991) as well as the trends for the area. That way, when you have inevitable gaps in your spreadsheet, you can build powerful assumptions (eg if you have no house price data for a particular year, but a similar house sells for similar values in three different years over a 15 year span, and for which you also have the AVD year data, you can argue pretty convincingly that they would be worth the same, subject to there being no alterations).

The second point is that we worked as a team with our other neighbours. Different people keep different pieces of information that neither you nor the VOA have access to, that can be powerful reference points for your case. If you don't ask, you will have no idea what they have. We were able to get paperwork from a different neighbour that we did not know had been published which also helped prove the case.

The third point is that if your house was built after 1991, then building a reference to the AVD date is critical. Try and find similar properties built locally and on the market within the same time frame that the AVD was set. Again, we were able to identify and reference a local estate.

I also feel quite strongly that people shouldn't go to tribunal if they aren't willing to put in the time and effort to make a case. If you lose, you make it much harder for your neighbours to make an appeal. We had to argue against a lost appeal on our estate. It was given a lot of weight at tribunal, even though the person had turned up, said their Mum's house was bigger and theirs should be banded the same without any further back up. Not surprisingly they lost...

It took 20 hours of research and a half day to attend tribunal to make my case. It took my neighbour the same amount of time. Challenge bandings by all means, but please don't go to tribunal without making an effort to be in possession of all the facts.

brightonbuoy

grace21 wrote: »

Hi brightonbuoy,
Well done, you've given me inspiration to have a go myself!!
All the best, let us know how you get on!!!
Good luck,
Grace

Hi Grace

I have my first court hearing (finally!!) on 10th February at Brighton County Court.

It is disgraceful the way our Council is behaving and I intend to go all the way and have included full interest in my claim. Watch this space!!!

grace21

brightonbuoy wrote: »

Hi Grace

I have my first court hearing (finally!!) on 10th February at Brighton County Court.

It is disgraceful the way our Council is behaving and I intend to go all the way and have included full interest in my claim. Watch this space!!!

Hi-ya brightonbuoy,
Good to hear from you again.
Let me know the outcome.
Grace

SUGARSPICE

Hi

Just wondering how you would Calculate what you could be refunded if you are in a Band lower than you should be?

Eg: We are in Band C but Ive worked out that I think we should be in Band B.

We live in 1 Bedroom Flat but some of the Flats in the same block & a block next to us are 2 Bedrooms,but we all come under Band C.

I rung up & they are looking into it,so we are now awaiting a letter from them which they said can take about 8 weeks.

Does anyone know how the refund is worked out?

Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thankyou.

vivatifosi

Hi Sugarandspice,

If you are re-banded it depends on what the "effective from" date is. Sometimes the VOA take into consideration recent changes in your area and back date to that time. Otherwise, the effective from date will likely be when Council Tax was introduced, or whenever you moved into your house, whichever is the most recent.

For example, if you moved into your house in 2000 and the "effective from" date is 1993, then you will get that portion for the period of when you moved in 2000 to current, and the local council may try and trace the previous tenants to refund them the remainder.

The refund is the difference between the cost of band B and the cost of band C at the relevant rate for the years in question.