Unfair Croydon Council unfair taxes

pennypinching77

I have recently acquired my house back having evicted my second lot of 'decent, reasonable' tenants. Never again. Having got property back and informed council. They say I will be charged the full council tax even though the property is empty pending sale.

I pay for another property in another area. If it was empty for more than 3 months I could understand but there is no grace period at all.
I am not rich and rented it out because it became unaffordable for me.

Croydon has one of the highest rates of non-payers for C Tax and I feel this is been used to claw back this extra money.

Has anyone successfully challenged this before, I unsuccessfully tried to get my property rebanded with this Council even though I had lots of evidence from neighbours banding but was told plainly that that was their decision and there was nothing I could do about it.

I would be appealing to the same council not an independent body, so would be grateful for any idea's anyone has.

Croydon Council seem to have a whole lot of rules and fees levied on home owners from this to building reg fees that other areas don't have.

Thanks in advance.

00ec25

you may be a LL but I see you don't really follow market developments

changes to CT rate is hardly news since it came in with huge publicity in April and it crops up on these boards on at least a weekly basis

no you cannot "appeal" the removal of the exemption and discounts, the law changed and gave councils absolute discretion to set their own rates of between unchanged and nil. Unsurprisingly given the financial status of most councils and the need to preserve what few jobs remain in them most have opted for zero discount so as to increase their income from people who own more than one property and therefore can afford to pay because they always have the option to sell up just like you are doing...


BTW rebanding has NOTHING to do with Croydon - all CT bands are set by the VOA, not by the respective council

pennypinching77

Thank you for taking the time to reply. You are absolutely right I had been ignorant and just re-signed to this forum after some years. For the past 3 years I would be up at 5am commtting 3.5 hours each way getting home with enough time to get ready for the next day and now that I've stopped recently
I feel like I've rejoined the world again!.

will keep up from now on!

pinkshoes

pennypinching77 wrote: »

I pay for another property in another area. If it was empty for more than 3 months I could understand but there is no grace period at all.
I am not rich and rented it out because it became unaffordable for me.

If you rent the other property, then why don't you move back into this one?

If you own the other property, then you can't have been that poor either owning two properties!

I also had to pay 100% council tax for an empty property in Oxford whilst it was sold. It's harsh, but fair, as many cities have a shortage of properties, so the council quite rightly want to discourage people leaving them empty.

CIS

Has anyone successfully challenged this before,

You can't - providing the council have set the rates within the delegated powers they have been given then there is no power for any outside body to overturn the decision and its unlikely the council will as the Councillors have set the policy.