Council Tax Rebanding SUCCESS stories

Graham_&_Nicola

Local Borough Council: Croydon
Council Tax Band Before: F
Council Tax Band After: E
Amount refunded: not yet known


After a casual chat to my immediate neighbour I investigated our CT valuation. They are Band E and we are Band F and it seemed that in the whole road I was the only one in the higher band.

A couple of calls and two letters confirmed the revaluation - we are now Band E. This goes back to 1993 and hopefully we will get a large sum back.

Does anybody know if this includes interest on the monies that we overpaid? After all we could have put our overpayments into savings, etc (although of course not in the recent past!!)

Thanks everyone for the help on the forums, especially this one.
N & C

lincroft1710

There is no requirement in CT legislation for councils to pay interest on refunds of overpayments. Therefore the council will not pay interest.

Shanker

No doubt the Council will have made good use of your over spend money by bolstering up their pension defecits.

No you won't see a penny more than what you have overspent so in real terms you have still lost out because not only will they not compensate you for lost potential interest, but they won't compensate you for the effects of inflation either.

They win everytime - its like you gave them an interest free loan!

theloft

Wycombe District Council (Valuations Office Bucks County Council).
Was Band G
Now Band F.

Saving of £320 this year !! Whoopee.

I telephoned first of all and then downloaded a form, filled it in and sent it off. Took about 2 months, but am I glad I appealed.

Shanker

I am glad everyone is getting a favourable result from the greedy councils.

If we didn't say anything and stayed schtum we would be run over rough shod by these parasites.

A parasite is something that feeds off another living being without having to fight or work for anything themselves and don't they just!

We own a flat just down the road from where we live. Originally it was a replacement holiday home for a static caravan that we owned and travelled to when we lived over 120 miles away. Needless to say the caravan was not a great buy as it was running away with our money with increased site fees and depreciation, so we took the decision to buy into bricks and mortar.

We, (my wife and I), were both working at the time, so money was fairly easy but now we are both retired and living in the area that we once went for weekends and holidays. We moved here about 5 years ago when my back gave in and we moved lock stock and barrel sold a larger detached house and bought a small bungalow.

We are paying council tax on the bungalow as we should, contributing to the services, most of which are poor and some that we will never use such as schooling and various liesure facilities.

The b*g*er of it is that we are having to carry on paying full council tax on the flat too which is in the same area. We are paying twice for the poor services. We rented it for a while but was not without its problems. We do not really want to be landlords, and want to sell, the legistlation for landlord, thanks to Mr Prescott is extremely onerous and makes renting for us not worthwhile. With the recession and property prices we are not likely to make a killing on the sale even if we could sell. Nobody can get mortgages. We are really relying on a cash buyer who has seperated from a partner or someone who intends downsizing.

We don't even get a concession from our greedy bas**rd council. Many councils give a 50% concession on a property that is empty and unfurnished but not ours.

Its not as though we are not already contributing to the borough pot, but we all know that that is not what we are chipping into anyway. We are paying for the over inflated salaries and gold plated pensions of the council officials.

The paperwork says that they could give a discretionary concession if they wanted but in the next sentence they say they choose not to.

When we were living 120 miles away we also had a vote in the local elections at both locations because we were contributing to two different boroughs, but even though we are contributing twice to the same borough now we are only permitted one vote. Work that one out!

Without doubt, no one can convince me that these councils are honest hard working people. They are parasites in my mind and I won't be convinced otherwise.

lincroft1710

Paying council tax has nothing whatsoever to do with the voting system. Foreign nationals who occupy houses in this country have to pay CT but have no right to vote.

If the council does not get full CT from one dwelling, all the others have to pay more to cover lost revenue. You have chosen to own 2 properties, if you cannot sell the flat then continue to rent it out and the tenant will pay the CT. By leaving it empty you are contributing to the housing problem. If you had sold the flat 3 years ago you would have made a reasonable profit. Even selling it now you should still get more than you paid for it.

Shanker

We rented for 18 months. The guy who we thought reliable certainly paid up on time, but there again being an ex-policeman he was on a damn good final salary pension. The trouble was he turned out to be an alcaholic and when p*ss*d out of his head spilt most of his whisky. He ruined a carpet and a lovely 2 piece suite which wasn't even covered on the deposit.

That's when we said never again. There are loads of properties lying empty at the moment. We are not John Prescotts charity, we wanted to sell straight away, it's been on the market for 5 years, but because of the instability that this moronic government has created we have had very little interest.

We bought the flat not particularly because we wanted to gain money through it being an investment, but because we didn't want to lose money like we were doing by "owning" a static caravan.

Paying council tax must have something to do with the voting system by way of the Electoral Roll. Our names obviously appear twice on it with having two properties. Whereas before we were in two different areas, so were on two different rolls we had a vote in and from both areas. Now we reside totally in the one area we are now down to one vote.

As I said the council could give a dispensation and charge us 50%. Other councils do this if the property is empty and unfurnished. Ours is empty and unfurnished and has had two for sale boards outside for the best part of 5 years. We are not contributing to the housing problem, the property is available for purchase.

Purchase is still far more advantageous than renting, but because of the complete and utter balls up the banks and the government have made between them nobody can get a 100% mortgage anymore. First time buyers are people suffering having to find massive deposits or having to borrow their inheritance from their parents to get on the property ladder.

Although the properties in our area have increased in price between 30 to 40% we are only asking a modest 17% above what we paid to cover interest payments made and perhaps make a little more for our ever decreasing retirement nest egg, (something else this thieving Labour government has delved into from almost day one of getting into power).

By attacking the dividends on pensions from 1997 and the closure of many final salary schemes people who were prepared to save and not squander had to find somewhere safe to invest their money. These people which include my wife and I should not be scorned because of this. By scrimping and being "prudent", (as they say), we have missed out on many pleasures, not even knowing if we will live to see our retirement. We don't and never called on the state to help us out and we have not chosen to "p*ss it up the wall" as some people call it.

If anybody should be scorned then read today's Daily Mail, (page 21, "Why work when I can get £42,000 in benefits a year AND drive a Merc?" - Tap that into your search engine! These are the low life scum bags that are causing all of the problems in the UK - A couple who don't know how to stop producing off-spring, and by all accounts doesn't want to stating that their target is 14 having already had 7 kids.

All 14 of these benefit claiming little sh*ts will of course be voting Labour at the future General Elections to maintain their chosen way of life.

I'm finished!

theloft

This thread was supposed to be about reporting successes with Council Tax Appeals. It seems to have turned into a Griping & Moaning Thread about Councils in general !

Shanker

Just trying to show that what you pay doesn't matter to them as long as they can squeeze the maximum until they get found out.

One doesn't go without the other in my opinion.

Genuine errors or administritive errors aren't being made. When the assessors come around they don't actually look at each property individually and relying on estate agent evaluations is going to get everyone into trouble!

Its a finger in the air job and then they let you do the research when you try to claim your money back.

Pretty much like the bins these days really. We used to employ the waste people to sort our rubbish out at the plant or the landfill, we are doing it now and we are still paying them!

The stuff was still getting sorted for recycling before, (maybe to a lesser extent granted).

I think it is important to know what we are getting for our hard earned money - don't you?

lincroft1710

If you do not live in the 2nd property your name should not be on the electoral roll for that address. I'm not even sure you should have had 2 votes when your main residence was in another part of the country and the flat was your holiday home.

Prior to recycling most rubbish was just dumped straight into the tip. If more people were employed by the council then your council tax would go up which you wouldn't want.

If you take the trouble to look at the council's literature on where the money goes, education takes a large bite of the cherry.

As you're in Wales there was a revaluation in 2005, which I understand was done in house by the VOA so estate agents weren't involved. If you want to blame anyone about the faults of the 1993 council tax system then blame the Conservatives. They were in power then and wanted a quick fix solution to the problem of the Community Charge and were not prepared to pay to get the job done properly.