Council Tax Rebanding SUCCESS stories

gambledandlost

just a quick question - do you get the refund by cheque or straight into your account? I am going away for a couple of months and dont want a cheque sittiing idle on the hallway floor

lincroft1710

gambledandlost wrote: »

just a quick question - do you get the refund by cheque or straight into your account? I am going away for a couple of months and dont want a cheque sittiing idle on the hallway floor

It's usually a cheque. Contact council and see if they will agree to paying it into your bank account. Alternatively see if they will credit the amount against next year's CT bill.

Figment

Council Tax Band Before: E
Council Tax Band After: D
Amount refunded: £3,574.29
Annual saving going forward: £300


Our house had an extension added prior to us buying, resulting in it being re-banded from C to E the day we moved in. I discovered that we were the only band E in a street of 42 houses, which didn't add up as we had what was originally a 2 bed linked semi (extended to 3 bed), whereas next door is a 3 bed link detached and across the way is a 4 bed link detached, both of which were band D.

I phoned the local VO late in the afternoon on 30th December. Received acknowledgement on 5th Jan, had another letter 3 days later saying investigation was completed and they were going to re-band it to band D, effective from the date we bought the house in 1997! A week or so later received 14 adjustment notices from local authority, followed by refund into bank today.

Figment

lincroft1710 wrote: »

It's usually a cheque. Contact council and see if they will agree to paying it into your bank account. Alternatively see if they will credit the amount against next year's CT bill.

Not true. Most Local Authorities will refund the money by the same method used to pay them, so if you pay by Direct Debit they will pay it by Bank Credit directly to your bank account.

lincroft1710

Figment wrote: »

Most Local Authorities will refund the money by the same method used to pay them, so if you pay by Direct Debit they will pay it by Bank Credit directly to your bank account.

If you read the posts on here, most have been refunded by cheque. When I worked in VOA refunds to CT payers by the councils we dealt with were by cheque.

But it may have changed now.

mrogers

Local Borough Council: Cornwall Council
Council Tax Band Before: E
Council Tax Band After: D
Amount refunded: £4200
:j:j:j
I had suspected for a while that we were in the wrong council tax band. I wrote to them a couple of years ago and just received a short reply saying it was correct. Then around Christmas time a member of the family started working in the local council dealing with Council tax and told me that you could check what bands all the properties in your postcode were on by going to Direct.gov. This then revealed that we were the only property on an E out of 18 properties in our postcode with the rest being on a D or even a C. As we are not the largest house this confirmed my suspicions that it was incorrect. Looking for more ammunition I used the caluculator on this site to work out the approx value of the property back in 1991 when the bands were decided. I put in the approximate value for the property today at around £250,000 and this put it easily in a D band and in fact the property could have been worth as much as £275,000 for it still to have been less than the £88,000 threshold for a D band.

I therefore wrote to the council again but this time also enclosed a letter from a local estate agent giving the current value of the property as being £250,000. Within 3 days we were surprised to receive a whole load of credit statements one for each year back to 1999. As there was no letter included it took us a while to work out what it all meant but slowly gathered that they had actually rebanded it to a D. Curious as to why it was backdated to 1999 when we had lived here since 1985 I rang the council who told me that they were going to refund right back to 1993 when council tax started but their computers could not print out statements earlier than 1999. Bonus! This meant that in total we were going to get £4,200 refunded. Definitely worth the little effort it took! The money arrived in our bank account a week later. We were really surprised that it had taken so little effort, we had expected a much bigger battle with surveyor's visits etc but all it took was one letter! Encouraged by my cheeky husband I did also enquire whether they were going to pay interest on our money they had had for so long and was told "yes they did pay interest but it was at 0%!" Oh well worth a try I guess!

I did wonder if we had been in the wrong council tax band, if that had also meant we had paid too much in water rates for all those years before we had transferred to a water meter. I rang south west water and was told that that was the case and that we should get a refund from them too. However, after having applied in writing for it we received an apologetic phone call from them saying we would not get anything refunded after all. Apparently "the water rates were calculated on the rateable value which is very different from council tax bands". I am still not convinced as we had always paid more in water rates than neighbours in comparable houses and south west water agreed our rateable value was in fact higher than others nearby but still maintain we are not due any refund!

Anyway we are more than happy with our successful challenge!

lincroft1710

mrogers - the law which enabled the Rateable Values still used by Water Authorities was repealed in 1990. So there is no legal way for RVs to be amended and SWW are correct in saying you are not entitled to any refund.

Flamers

Local Authority: East Devon
Band Before: G
Band After: F

Having moved into a modern (circa 1982) 4 bed det house just outside Exeter in 2003 with a Council Tax band of of G we started to realise the banding was not right. In 2007 I followed the instructions here and realised most similar properties in the village were band E or F. We bought in 2003 at £295k and properties in a band G were selling at £450k plus. I wrote with this 'evidence' to the valuation office who dismissed my letter saying the other properties in lower bands were different. That they 'absolutley confident I was in the right band'. The problem is that all the properties are different, village properties old and new. We are not on an estate and this makess it much harder. I gave up until I read about appealing and this time produced a comprehensive 'pack. This contained:

• Lists of council tax bands of the neighbouring properties similar to my own.
• Lists of sale prices of neighbouring properties from the land registry.
• Copies of Sales particulars for neighbouring properties
• Maps showing the locations of all the properties cited and their proximity to my own.
• A copy fom the Nationwide house price indicator rolled back to 1991. (Mine showed a value of around £115k at that point).

However, the appeals office in London asked for the statement of decision from the local valuation office. When I checked they had never given this and only provide an 'informal review'!!! So I submitted the same pack to the local office. Today I called them and they informed me the banding had been lowered from Band G to Band F. I still believe it should be a Band E but F is much better than G! I am now hoping I don't have to fight for 8 years of rebate!!!


It made no sense to me that my house a standard not large 4 bed det could be rated one band lower than the Country house down the road with hundreds of acres and a hall my house would fit into several times over!


Thank you and this site for the inspiration to keep ploughing on. The trick I think is to provide well researched indisputable evidence presented in a way that is clear and comprehensive.

Today received cheque from East Devon DC for circa £2,500, without prompting!!!!

jgrumpy

Bought a flat in Cornwall last November. Had previously owned an identical flat in same block which was CT band D. The new one, 3 floors higher so better view = higher value, was band E. There are 8 identical 2 bed flats in this block but 6 were banded D and 2 at E. Also there are 2 much bigger 2 bed flats, so of greater value, which are both D. Wrote to VOA in Dec 2011 pointing this out as an anomoly and learned yesterday that they agree to reband to D. That's a saving of £315 immediately for me but the VOA tells me that the previous owners can claim back the 9+ yrs they were made to overpay, so I've dropped 'em a line. The alternative to this result would have been that all the other flats got upped to E which probably was the correct solution given the prices of flats back in 1991. It's nice to get one over 'the powers that be'. Who dares wins!!

CarolynCh

Local Borough Council: Manchester City Council
Council Tax Band Before: F
Council Tax Band After: E
Amount refunded: £1569.11
Annual saving going forward: approx £300 per year

The VOA confirmation letter was dated 25 December but we have had to wait until 14 February to actually receive the refund and I suspect that is only because I have registered a complaint as it was taking so long. Not impressed with the City Council keeping my money - have asked for compensation!