Only freedom will do

edinburgher

Band E.

Unlike yourself (I'm guessing), we pretty much bought the most house we could afford in an area with fantastic schools. Our real increase may only be £25/month, but that's a lot when you're on 1.5 salaries that just about make it to the median for the UK.

Knit_Witch

I host my blog/s through heart internet

Suffolk_lass

My Mum's in East Ayrshire and lives alone. With her 25% discount hers is still up by £32 a month from £202 to £234. She won't consider moving because it was the house she shared with my Dad until he died.

Karmacat

Just catching up, Ed - I buy my domains through 123reg, my current live sites are on tsohost (whose admin is very complicated, even though they're cheap and efficient, I don't like the admin, and I'm moving). Weebly has our old work website, and they give you 500MB of free bandwidith, but they're so massive you'll never speak to anyone, which is a real plus with tsohost, they really did talk me through some backroom stuff. For simple buying of a domain, 123reg remains my standard.

earthgirl

I use godaddy and heart internet. Both are really simple. Hearts servers are Europe (London) based and this used to help us with ranking better for U.K. Searches. Not sure if this is still a factor in the algorithm or not!

AlexLK

Council tax has risen here too by 2.6%; not quite so bad as your rise.

Quite surprised your house is a Band E (from what you've said about it before), it may be worth trying to get is re-banded. Mine is Band D and if I am recalling the details about your house correctly, is larger and has quite a lot more land. I don't live in the ghetto, either.

SuperSecretSquirrel

AlexLK wrote: »

Council tax has risen here too by 2.6%; not quite so bad as your rise.

Quite surprised your house is a Band E (from what you've said about it before), it may be worth trying to get is re-banded. Mine is Band D and if I am recalling the details about your house correctly, is larger and has quite a lot more land. I don't live in the ghetto, either.

Bands are based on property value back in 1991. First I thought a case of location location location - a studio flat in central London could no doubt be valued higher than some massive rural barn conversions, so could easily end up in a higher band. It's actually harsher than that though, moved goalposts for Scotland:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/council-tax-bands-change

Value in 1991 range for band E in England £88,001 - £120,000 and Scotland £58,001 - £80,000

Of course houses in Scotland may well have been cheap back in 1991, but I'd guess not necessarily the case when considering a desirable area of a major city.

AlexLK

There's yet another reason to choose a rural area over an urban one. Banding for Scotland seems really unfair, though I think council tax is ridiculous. I cannot see how living in a house of greater value correlates to a greater use of public services controlled by local government. If anything, I'd imagine in most cases the opposite to be true.

edinburgher

Not entirely sure that's true SSS? I seem to recall Westminster having some of the lowest council tax in the country?

I'm not sure Alex understands the link between tax and broader shoulders...

Suffolk_lass

edinburgher wrote: »

Not entirely sure that's true SSS? I seem to recall Westminster having some of the lowest council tax in the country?

Ah yes, that was in the days of the Tesco heir - Dame Shirley Porter. [The Thatcherite leader of Westminster City Council was the first to really decimate public services in the name of lowering rates/community charges/poll taxes/Council Tax - relying on people thinking they were just paying for streetlights and bin collections.]

Sorry. I apologise for ranting about the loathsome woman