Council Tax Rebanding SUCCESS stories

steinwaymamma

Council: Kingston-upon-Thames
Original band: G
New Band: F

Our bungalow was fairly unique in the neighbourhood and after initially rejecting out claim, we persevered and was about to go to the tribunal. It was very difficult to get historical information as there were no newspapers available, and the properties around us were very varied in banding. Eventually, after calling the VOA, they were quite helpful and gave me some info on sold prices of similar sized houses. When I heard which details they had on record for our property, I realised that they hadn't properly measured the size in the past 30 years. The lady suggested that they came and do measurements and amazingly a few weeks after that, we received a letter to say that our council tax band has been reduced. Didn't have to go to the tribunal after all! Thanks for all your help and details on the website, Martin! The previous owner can now claim back all the tax overpaid from 1993!

SaverSaver

I have just been called by the Valuation office to confirm that I am being moved down from Band E to Band D following my application based on the great advice here. Many thanks. Full details to follow....

bigboy65

Hi,

After reading Martin's newsletter a couple of years ago I finally got round to doing something about our council tax banding. I have suspected for some years that we were in the wrong band so checked the Scottish assessor's website which confirmed we were in band E while other identical houses in the street were band D. We have been in the house since May 1995. I duly made a proposal for re-banding and after one visit from the assessor have been successful. It took 9 weeks and yesterday I received confirmation from the city council that a refund would be paid into our account in due course.
A very nice surprise! Thanks Martin.

Council: Aberdeen City
Council tax band before: E
Council tax band after: D
Amount refunded: £5961.72
Annual saving going forward: £365

headachesrus

The house adjoining ours was sold some 10 years ago. The new buyer was a savvy girl and got the council to re band her house from a D to a C. I sort of jumped on her bandwagon and wrote to the Council asking for confirmation that if next door was a C then surely mine should be. I got a refund of 15 years worth of over payments totalling just under £1000. As I say this was a good ten years ago.

SaverSaver

Council: Hinckley & Bosworth.
Moved in: Oct 1999.
Band was in : E
Rebanded to : D
Credit back: £4,220.
Present mood: :j

We live in a 1969 estate where all the houses were physically the same when originally banded. Using the advice on the main MSE website I checked my neighbours bandings and found I was in E where all but 1 other where in D. My next door neighbour told me he had just been changed from E to D but only after being rejected and having to pay a legal firm 50% of his rebate to take it to court for him.
I followed the advice of this website and sent my request for re-evaluation with my reasons being neighbours are lower. Historic valuation says taking the purchase price of my house in 2000 would have put me bang in the middle of band D when valuations took place. I faxed, emailed and posted my request. I received a reply saying they would re-evaluate us. Then a call from the office saying they agreed and would send the info to the council and then 3 weeks later (today) we get a cheque from the council. Many thanks to all the members here for making it easy for me. Best of luck to those thinking about it.

Lou30

Hi everyone,

I have recently challenged my council tax band & I have received a letter from the Valuation office yesterday to say they have concluded their review and they are satisfied my property falls within the correct band.

My property is currently in band F and I believe it should be in band E- My reasons for this are there are 14 properties in my road which are in band E - all these properties were formally band F but have at some point been lowered to band E ( I have checked this information via the VOA website)

The band E properties are identical or similar to mine & are of the same size.
The letter from the VOA office says they have found all except one to be smaller in size. They say the one that is slightly smaller was extended by the current owner and therefore they can't change the band until a sale takes place.
So basically they are saying that my property is bigger than those properties in my road who are in band E , but this is not correct.

The letter goes on to say I can only submit a formal review , known as a proposal in limited circumstances, I don't meet the criteria for any of them, I would really appreciate any advice on where I can go from here, if anywhere! Can I ignore the "limited circumstances" and go straight to the tribunal?

Any advice would be great- thank you so much

lincroft1710

Lou30 wrote: »

Can I ignore the "limited circumstances" and go straight to the tribunal?

No. The appeals process makes this impossible.

If you are absolutely positive that your house is an identical type and size to a Band E house, you could ask the VOA to inspect your home. However there is a risk that the VOA may decide that the Band E houses should be increased back to Band F.

You could complain, follow the instructions in this link

https://www.gov.uk/government/organi...ints-procedure

Lou30

thank you so much for your reply - I will give the VOA a call!

ch4rly2002

We moved into our new home in January this year, and after the previous owner told us he thought the council tax band was wrong, I appealed the council tax band in March and got the letter today to inform me that the council tax has been altered from band E to band D! There won't be much of a refund for us, but it will save us £327.49 this year, and each year from now. I will tell the previous owner (20 years of rebate in store for him) and the other neighbours who are on this band. Thanks MoneySavingExpert for the advice you gave - it was really helpful! :beer:

Pattielabelle

We purchased a brand new property in 2014 which was banded as F. These are a mix of three and four bed detached houses. Several residents thought their house had been banded incorrectly, but only about three individuals appealed.

I checked the price we paid, plus the price the house builder had originally asked - which were miles apart in value - with the Nationwide calculator of the 1991 bandings. Both these figures corresponded with band E. However the Valuation Office were having none of it! I found a similar house in the same village at band E which had been for sale for more than we paid. Again the valuation Office dismissed this. I found them to be fairly unhelpful as to what I needed to do to prove otherwise.

The appeal date was set and I wrote my final letter of appeal at more or less the same time that a neighbour told us his appeal from an E to a D had finally been successful. Shortly after my appeal letter was received by the Valuation office, I found out that all the houses on the small estate had gone down in banding on the council's website. Shortly after that, the Valuation Office phoned me to say that they were reducing our band to an E. All in all it took about seven months.

So thanks to this site we'll be paying several hundred pounds less per annum on our property, and receive a rebate for overpayment dating back to last July.

Keep battling!!!