Council tax for extensions

SteveCo

My parents are disabled, to be closer to them and take care of them I recently built a extension onto my parents house.

I was added to the land registry and was able to remortgage the house.

I am now trying to figure out what I need to do with regards to council tax.

I understand that extensions are flagged to be reassessed by the council. 3 months on the council hasn't done anything so far.

I contacted them the other day and they said that usually no band changes except when the house sells. The house hasn't been sold although my name has been added to the land registry.

I suspect that the house might end up having two council taxes as the extension has a kitchen and a bathroom, dispite the fact that the only access is via the main house We do however have a side door to the garden however we have a shared sitting room.

I hadn't really thought that a single house could end up having to pay two lots of council tax.

Before contacting them further,

1/ Can anyone tell me what the criteria are for judging a property as having a seperate living space?

2/ I understand that houses can be banned only when sold. No money was transfered in this case, and my name was just added to the land registry alongside my parents before the extension was built.

3/ Are their specialists in this who can give me advice and deal with the council on my behalf? I'm a bit above my head as the rules seem complex, and I would rather get things sorted properly rather than face a massive bill down the road despite not being at fault.

CIS

I understand that extensions are flagged to be reassessed by the council. 3 months on the council hasn't done anything so far.

In England & Wales it's the Valuation Office Agency who are responsible. A property would not be re-banded except on sale or transfer of ownership.

An annexe/exetension may be banded separately if it's self contained but again you would need to speak with the Valuation Office Agency for them to make the determination.

SteveCo

CIS wrote: »

In England & Wales it's the Valuation Office Agency who are responsible. A property would not be re-banded except on sale or transfer of ownership.

An annexe/exetension may be banded separately if it's self contained but again you would need to speak with the Valuation Office Agency for them to make the determination.

I'm waiting to hear back from them if they think it is self contained. Since a house can be split up in any number of ways I'm really not hopeful that someone isn't going to decide that it could be self contained. We have a utility room and a kitchen so I'm guessing they might say someone could use the utility room as a kitchen dispite the fact that the house has one sitting room which makes it impossible to rent out the house as a separate unit. So at most we could only ever rent out rooms.

lincroft1710

Can you describe the exact layout of the house please?

SteveCo

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Can you describe the exact layout of the house please?

I've tired to send you a PM with the floor plan. Unfortunately the forum rules stop me from posting any links.

Briefly layout is:

Front door leads to main hallway with stairs directly ahead to secondfloor with 4 bedrooms and bathroom.
1/ To left of main hallway leads to old kitchen (current utility room) and study. Old kitchen has door to side leading to garden.
2/ To right of main hallway leads to open plan sittingroom and dinning room which has a doorway which leads to the the new kitchen, a bathroom and second set of stairs leading to two new bedrooms. Just outside of New kitchen is also a side door leading to garden.

The extension part doesn't have a separate sitting room / dinning room of its own.
I use the 2 bedrooms in the extension (one bedroom, one home office) the rest of the house is used by the entire household.

Thanks for the advice.

lincroft1710

Thanks for the PM, Steve.

For the benefit of others I'll repeat my answer.

My thoughts are that there are probably 2 self contained units here. The VOA can ignore by whom the rooms are actually used, they will just look at which set of rooms forms a self contained unit. Intercommunicating doors between the units are also ignored.

I would stress that this is my opinion, your local VOA may disagree with my views.