Council tax - this can't be right

reehsetin

We've been in our property 3 years and I checked when we moved in whether we could do anything to lower the council tax rate but it appeared we were in the right band (band E) .
I know our council charge a bit more than many others but an article in the paper today has left me in disbelief.

We have a 3 bed house and we pay approx £1,800 a year. Today's paper has a £100m property in central london and it states they would pay £1,369 in council tax. Is this really right, £500 a year more for a little 3 bed? This seems crazy, is there anything at all we can do to reduce how much we pay?

notanewuser

reehsetin wrote: »

We've been in our property 3 years and I checked when we moved in whether we could do anything to lower the council tax rate but it appeared we were in the right band (band E) .
I know our council charge a bit more than many others but an article in the paper today has left me in disbelief.

We have a 3 bed house and we pay approx £1,800 a year. Today's paper has a £100m property in central london and it states they would pay £1,369 in council tax. Is this really right, £500 a year more for a little 3 bed? This seems crazy, is there anything at all we can do to reduce how much we pay?

Probably not. It's not really how council tax works.

You need to look at it another way. Your council serves X number of people in Y number of properties. It has to provide certain services to certain levels, at a cost of £Z. Differentials for every council will be unique to that council.

Now, rather than split the bill per person or per property on an equal split, it has a formula which allocates according to property size/value. So if a council has a large spend (lots of council houses, weekly rubbish collections, well funded schools etc) every paying household will pay more compared with a similar banded property in another area. It's misleading to compare properties in vastly different areas.

Does that make sense?

reehsetin

Yes it does, but it's still absolutely infuriating :mad:

Teaches me for reading the paper, should have known it would ruin my day

martinsurrey

a lot of the inner London boroughs get a huge amount of cash through car parking charges, so don’t need to charge as much council tax to deliver their services.

Unfortunately, the areas with the highest parking incomes are generically those that house the people with the ability to pay much more, but that life.

kathrynha

Take it you were reading the metro. I read it too and was shocked by the low council tax. Ours is just £300 less and is a 2 bed terrace ex-council house.

reehsetin

Yes it was the metro.

I could stomach a small difference because I love where I live but £500 more is just silly. As much as I like the area I'd move to central London in a heartbeat if I could afford it.