Council Tax Rebanding SUCCESS stories

Polife

Just heard this morning that we have been successful. Over £2000 just for the price of a stamp.:j
Following past success with endowment mortage over £10000 reclaimed. I am sooooooooooooooo happy!

BForrester

Council - Plymouth
Council tax band - B
Level of Success - 0!

I had nothing but trouble with Plymouth council over the issue of council tax. I first moved to Plymouth as a student and was living with other students. In my final year studying, out of the blue, I got a council tax bill demanding I pay the £100 per month. Of course I rang them but got nowhere. Each idiotic person I spoke to had no idea what they were talking about - I was simply told I must pay it and they had no record of me being a student. Eventually threats came to send in a bailiff so I paid the first month whilst waiting for it to be sorted. After 24 phone calls and 7 letters, I managed to convince them I was a student. However, they flatly refused to pay back the £100 I paid saying that I could only prove I was a student from that time and not before when I paid the money! The uni were no help either in providing records. After no success, I wrote that off as a lost cause.

After finishing my degree, I decided to stay and work in Plymouth. I moved into a 4 bedroom terraced with my friends (all of whom were students). I rang the council to explain that I had graduated and lived with students. They granted me the 25% discount as a single payee in that household. When the first bill arrived, I was stunned - £150! And that was with the discount.

I rang the council to explain that I simply couldn't afford that as I earned minimum wage but again, they didn't want to know. I phoned a total of 115 times over an 8 month period and wrote 34 letters but always got the same response. My argument was that whilst, yes, when the bands were first introduced, it was a 5 bed family home but it had been turned into a student house - I rented a room, not the house. However, they argued that it didn't matter and that I was responsible for the full amount (the analogy they during one of my many phone calls was 'think of it as though you are a single mother and the other student tenants are your children - you'd still have to pay the full amount'. I had to use my overdraft to pay it and ended up owing the bank £1200 because of this.

Needless to say I am disgusted with the service. They are thieves, pure and simple. They refused to listen to reason and even a visit to citizen's advice was useless as they sided with the council.

If you live in Plymouth, I feel sorry for you as you will be up against tyrants. My parents live in a 5 bedroom detached property near Cheltenham and only pay £100 a month - it's day light robbery!

fusty

Hi All
Just moved into a house built in 2000, its a band D with the street made up with a mixture of C & D. Mainly the 3 beds are C & the 4 beds are D, ours is 3 bed, I asked VOA to lower the band but it was rejected. I have now appealled & am awaiting a date for the hearing.
Has anyone been to a hearing, any idea on % of success & is it as daunting as it sounds!
Cheers

lincroft1710

Yes, I've been to loads of hearings, I'm ex VOA.

Although there has to be a degree of formality and certain rules have to be obeyed, you are not on trial. You are given the opportunity to state your case, you may be asked questions by VOA or Tribunal on your evidence and you can question VOA about evidence they give.

It is impossible to say what chance of success you will have without seeing the evidence of both sides. The more prudent VOA staff will not usually take a case to a hearing unless they are fairly confident of a decision in their favour. This does not mean they are always right. As your home was built well after 1991 it is doubtful there will be any sales evidence of exactly the same house type, although there may be evidence of settled appeals on that type. So you may be able to persuade hearing that VOA have got it wrong.

Sneeze

Local Borough Council: Castle Point
Council Tax Band Before: D
Council Tax Band After: C
Amount refunded: £1116.40
Annual saving going forward: £168.32

This was so easy to do and didn't even cost the price of a phone call as the call was made to a normal landline telephone number already included in my phone package. It has not even taken a month from the time I made the phone call to the banking of the refund cheque today. Thanks for the step by step easy to follow guide.

lincroft1710

BForester - £100 pm for a 5 bed nr Cheltenham seems far too LOW!! 3 bed semi in Bedford (Band D) is £!50+ pm over 10 months, which is dearer than Plymouth! So the council are hardly robbers.

It makes no difference to the band that the house is occupied by students rather than a family. Unfortunately for you the council are correct in billing you for full CT amount less 25% single person discount. Again for a 5 bed house the amount does not seem unreasonable. Because of your low wage did you see if you were entitled to Council Tax Benefit.

My long term advice would be to find somewhere where other sharers are not students.

mevans_2

North Somerset
Band F
Band E
Refund - still to be advised
Annual Saving - £309

The Valuation Office initially rejected my first approach, without any substantiation. I spoke to the officer concerned and he explained the logic of their decision. Luckily he agreed to reconsider if I provided more information to support my claim. I think the policy is to reject all claims initially and to see if you pursue it any further!

I had two ways to justify my case: - 1) valuation in 1991 using Nationwide indices; and 2) compare my banding with other, bigger and more expensive properties locally.

1) My poroperty had been sold twice since 1991, so I converted these back to a 1991 price. The results correlatred by about £500 and demonstrated thatr based on value, my property should be band E not band F

2) I used the indices to value local properties at 1991 prices and compared them, and their banding with my property. I picked a couple of properties that clearly showed the discrepancy and concentrated on these (particularly the property the Valuation Officer had mentioned he was using as a benchmark). I then printed aerial photos from Multimap (all at the same scale) and compared the areas of the building footprints, the gross external floor areas, and the plot sizes. This further supported my view that my property should have a lower rating.

I made it clear to the Valuation Officer that if he did not agree to reduce the banding that I would require formal notification from him with a fully supported explanation of his decision - in at least the same depth that I had had to present. I explained this was only fair - so that I had trhe oppiortunity to challenge this at the subsequent appeal.

I have just heard my council tax band has been reduced to band E

I started this on 18 Jan 10, and just had notification of reduction (29 Mar 10). So this has taken about 10 weeks.

Kelstar73

We challenged our banding as a property at the other end of our block of houses is in band D and we are an E. This other property is bigger than ours so we thought it was worth the phonecall.

I was told over the phone that we are an E and that was that but if I wasn't happy with this then to write in, which I did the same day.

We received a form a few days later which we had to fill in and have thought nothing more of it until today when we received a letter from the VOA saying that they agree with what we wrote and the band will be changed to a D!!!! We have been advised that a letter will be written to our council and they will be informed of the change and it is backdated to October 2002 which is when we bought the property!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can I ask how long any of you had to wait before you received a refund?

Thanks,
Kelly

byz1823

Bristol city council

Found out at the end of feb that all houses in our street are band D except ours which is band E for no apparent reason. We have not extended our property in any way since we bought it in 1998 . I spoke to the VOA office on 1st march who agreed to look into it and I recv'd a letter on 25th march agreeing that we were in the wrong band and that they would lower it to band D. Spoke to Council tax office today who advised that a refund of £3099,dating back to 1998, would be sent direct to our bank account in a matter of days. It was as simple as that!!!!!!!:j

betseyboo

Local Borough Council: West Oxfordshire District Council
Council Tax Band Before: F
Council Tax Band After: E
Amount refunded: £3,200
Annual saving going forward: approx £300

Thank you so much Martin - one telephone call to the Valuation Office; a lady came out to look at our cottage (we did not even have to be in!); she called me back confirming she had lowered our band - and today WODC called to tell me we will get a refund of £3,200 along with a rate that is around £40 per month lower than it would have been - result! Definitely worth doing.......................:j