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

guppy

brightonbuoy wrote: »

Hi, me again.

Have not as yet been allocated to a band, a court hearing has been set for next month. However, the Council has offered to pay the outstanding repaymeny plus court fees but refused to pay interest. All of this is to be under a strict confidentiality agreement. It seems that the current news spotlight on this issue has made someone uncomfortable, but nevertheless I have accepted because there is no guarantee that I would get any further by continuing. I have contacted Grace21 with my suggestions, but in the circumstances I am not able to write further on this blog. Thank you all for your help and support, and I suppose that I have succeeded really!!

Congratulations...I think! Stinks of an outrageous cover up by the council though...

Zebedeee

guppy wrote: »

Congratulations...I think! Stinks of an outrageous cover up by the council though...

Doesn't it just! A very strong smell of fish there!

Good to have you back guppy. We have missed you:D

Yaffle_II

Hi all,
First post, be kind!

We moved into our 1950's town house in Oct 1993 and never question the tax until now. We have found that out of 30 houses in our postcode, there are only 3 band B's (one of them us), the rest being A's. One house stuck out a mile when we moved in and it had a canopy/porch, garage, partial loft conversion, tarmac drive & landscaped garden, so we understand why it was a band B. Our house and the other in band B were much the same as the other 27 houses. Ours had double glazing (as did many others, but not all), but nothing much else and was on the end of a block of 4 (18 others are positioned on ends of blocks). In 1993 they all looked the same! We lodged our appeal and got the valuation officers initial rejection on the grounds that we were 'out of time', but the cover letter from the listing officer said she would carry out a review and we were hopeful this would sort it out (as many on here have at this stage). This week she replied to say she agreed that we were banded correctly! Its seems so unfair! We are getting together all our evidence for an official appeal and potential tribunal but it seems daunting to take these people on. We purchased our house for £35,500 in April 1993 and the Nationwide calculator says it was £37,797 in April 1991. Another 2 doors down (band A) was purchased at the same time for around £34,500 and we can track the adverts from a local paper archive to confirm these prices. Another house (band A) that appears in the VOA listing seems to have had a banding review (the only one) with an effective date of 1/4/91 and an original band B. Does this date mean they appealed at the time? We know that the original owners have moved since and it has changed hands a couple of times so we cant really ask the current tenants. Many other houses have been sold over the years and not had any banding changes despite alterations to the properties. We realise that our house would be in band B if we were to sell as we had a loft conversion in 2002 to go from a 3 bed to 4, but are assume that should not make any difference to our protests about the initial banding. Anyone else had a similar case and been to a tribunal? Are we wasting our time? If not, what additional evidence would be useful other than that suggested by Martin? Sorry so many questions, but this has started to stress us out! :mad:

p.s. we live in England

grace21

Zebedeee wrote: »

Doesn't it just! A very strong smell of fish there!

Good to have you back guppy. We have missed you:D

I ditto Zebedee's welcome back message to Guppy.

I too have to agree with the proposed outcome from B&HCC it isn't the action of a council with a strong case!!

Finally good to have you back Guppy...

Grace

stardelight

Hi, i'm sorting my elderly fathers tax band out.
I have done all the reading on here about the steps to do this, and have decided firstly to give the Listings Office a call this week.
However, i came across the follow from one of the links... and this has 'thrown' my hopes off course. My father bought his house from the borough council with a discount in the 70's. So, does this mean he will not be considered for a re-valuation?
Your views please will help,
thankyou.

The starting point

The basis of valuation for a dwelling which is not used for any business purpose is the amount which, subject to certain assumptions, it would have sold for on the 'open market' by a 'willing vendor' on 1 April 1991 in England and 1 April 2003 in Wales.

• 'open market' means a market where the property is offered openly with adequate publicity being given to the sale. Please note that if your property was purchased under a discount scheme (such as 'Right to Buy') this does not fall within the definition of 'open market' and therefore will not apply.
• 'willing vendor' means someone who sells the property as a free agent and not someone who is forced to do so

Zebedeee

Hi stardelight. I would have thought, although I am open to correction, that this would have no effect on your fathers revaluation. His property will have had an open market value in 1991 and there are probably other properties in a simillar position with which it could be compared. You will need to find good reasons, especially comparables, to request a revaluation as he has been in the property over 6 months. If you can do this, go for it!

Zebedeee

stardelight

Zebedeee wrote: »

Hi stardelight. I would have thought, although I am open to correction, that this would have no effect on your fathers revaluation. His property will have had an open market value in 1991 and there are probably other properties in a simillar position with which it could be compared. You will need to find good reasons, especially comparables, to request a revaluation as he has been in the property over 6 months. If you can do this, go for it!

Zebedeee

Hi Zebedee, thankyou.
Yes i do believe he should be 'down' banded from his current 'D' to a 'c' as he is in a block of '6' he is at one end, and the other identical one at the other end is a 'C'... furthermore, the middle terraced house is also a band 'c' and these two c's both have 'effective' date 1st April 93..so i presume they also queried theirs to get it lowered to their current 'c'.
Do you agree with my thoughts?

Zebedeee

That sounds reasonable, stardelight. Get as much evidence as you can on your side to guard against the possibility that the VOA decide to put the Cs up to D!

As you say, the 1993 effective date would seem to suggest that the others have been revalued.

Hope you have success!

Zebedeee

vivatifosi

Hi Yaffle,

Did you put the evidence of the similar house prices to the VOA at the time of your initial appeal? If not I would make sure that I put it to them now. If they still reviewed your band and stated that it was an A, I would write to them under the Freedom of Information Act and ask them how they arrived at their decision. They will probably withhold prices from you but it is not unreasonable to ask them what comparisons they used and what their rationale was. When you get this come back on again, let us compare the evidence and knock our collective heads together to see what we can come up with for ideas as to the next move.

Good luck!

vivatifosi

Yaffle_II

Hi Vivatifosi,

Thanks for your reply.

My wife verbally gave the listing officer some information and reasons why we thought we should be re-banded over the phone, but then we began to build up our dossier of information to send to the VOA. To be honest we didnt expect the review to be done so quickly and hadn't had time to send our full appeal request and evidence before the review arrived last week. I'm off this afternoon to get house prices for around 1991 from a local archive and also the adverts for our house and the one 2 doors up that we know were put in the local paper in March 1993 (thats where we first saw that the house was for sale!). One problem I may have is that our road is split halfway down, with our top half being a different postcode to the bottom. The bottom half is considered more desirable to live in as its closer to a more upmarket estate (ridiculous,but true!) and prices are generally 10%+ more than our half for the same type of house, so any adverts for these houses will not be representative of the whole road and will not help me. I think that the sale of our house and the neighbours will probably be the closest sales to April 1991 in our postcode, do you think these adverts will further our appeal? I know that the house calculators dont carry any weight but I've just tried the Halifax one and it came to £39,351 based on our 1993 purchase price and its worryingly close to £40K!

Will keep you posted!

Yaffle