Help!!! Dodgy Landlord, bullying and back dated demands from council!

CIS

I would be seriuosly concerned as to whether the property has building regs and planning permisions as well.

That's exactly the same as I was thinking. I'm starting to think its a botched job.

lincroft1710

Eton_Rifle wrote: »

Is it the shared utilities that make the difference? I'm thinking of my own situation as I have a house with an annex. It has bedrooms, reception rooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and its own front door although you can also access it from two internal lockable doors in the main house. It shares all utilities including heating with the main house.
It does not attract separate council tax.

It should be separately assessed for CT.

I'm ex VOA and your annex is a prime candidate for its own CT band

MrsWoolfe

Thanks for all of this guys- I'm sure she will really appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

From everything I've seen/heard it sounds like a huge bodge job- and I do wonder whether it is actually habitable stricly speaking, but all of those things are sort of outside the main problem at the moment i suppose.

the question that seems to keep coming up is why no CT has ever been issued before now- even the council had no records of previous bills for the barn-

whose responsibility is it to inform the council that there is a separate dwelling being rented out?

I guess the main this for now is for them to talk to someone with legal knowledge re the contract and on a separate issue negotiate a payment plan with the council that won't leave them unable to afford basic livng costs. I know that they are on a really tight budget which is probably why she is getting so upset, hopefully the council will take on board that they genuinely beleived that CT was being paid over by LL and were not in any way trying to avoid paying and some sort of agreement can be reached. fingers crossed in any case.

thanks so much for all the advice and if anyone thinks of anything else that might help her we'd be very grateful!

So far I've suggested she check 1) whether their deposit has been registered 2) whether the LL in fact is allowed to rent out the property under the terms of his mortgage (don't want any more nasty shocks) 3) get legal advice as to whether the contract is actually valid...

In meantime they are looking for somewhere else asap and hopefully will be able to resolve this soon.

thanks again everyone

MrsWoolfe

DVardysShadow

lincroft1710 wrote: »

As the tenant "J" is responsible for paying the Council Tax, any "agreement" with LL does not change this, and it is "J" who will be chased if they don't pay not the LL.

That advice, while 'correct', is incomplete.

It states the position over who is responsible for paying the council tax to the council. It has no bearing on the contractual issue between Landlord and Tenant as to who is responsible.

If the contract says that the Landlord is responsible, but the Landlord does not pay, then the tenant will have to fork out to the council. But the tenant will have grounds to claim from the Landlord.