Council Tax Rebanding Success

apictureofyou

Tried in 2008 to change my banding but was refused by Havering Council and they would not let me appeal against the decision. I recently tried again, this time I walked the whole length of my road and made a note of all detached houses that were a similar size to my house and found four. When I checked the banding of these houses found that they were in 'E' Band, whereas I was in 'F' band.


I contacted the Council with this new information and they said to send them an e-mail detailing this information and that I would receive a response in eight weeks' time. Received nothing, so phoned again and was told that our Band had been changed to an 'E'. Absolutely delighted as we had been paying in 'F' Band for 21 years.


We have now been repaid the £5,020 they owed us.


We did have to send the Council a stiff letter before we were credited with this amount as they wanted to take a years Council Tax out of our money, even though we normally pay monthly. We received an apology and the full refund.


I hope this success story will help anyone who is thinking about challenging their banding.

bananacakes

Fantastic stuff!

I have just attempted to challenge the band on the property we currently rent and have received the letter this morning saying that it has been denied. They don't seem to have addressed any of my original concerns in the letter though. I understand that we live on a street where all the houses are worth substantially more than the one we are living in but they seem to be using this as justification that our house "must" be in the correct band, despite the fact that our house is in severe need of updating, is smaller than the other houses and it was last sold in December 2002 for £99,000. Yet apparently to be given a Band E it would need to have been worth at least £123,001 on 1st April 2003 (4 months later!) The letter simply says that the house next door is an E therefore we are an E and no mention at all was made to the £99k sale in 2002.

Have I just missed something entirely or should I try and raise this issue with them again? The letter says I can't appeal.