I dropped out of my PGCE/ITT course after only 2 months so am I due a council tax rebate?

lincroft1710

warwick2001 said:

I will say this was Cumbria County Council, so I can only speak for their procedures, but I would have thought most councils operate in a similar fashion.

I wonder if @CIS would agree with this as he has experience of dealing with many councils

strawb_shortcake

lincroft1710 said:

warwick2001 said:

I will say this was Cumbria County Council, so I can only speak for their procedures, but I would have thought most councils operate in a similar fashion.

I wonder if @CIS would agree with this as he has experience of dealing with many councils

My local council ask for the course start and finish date, so in my Husband's case we applied at the start of his 4 year university course and our discount will be applied each year unless our circumstances change. 
Which I guess may well be next September if my eldest child doesn't go to uni??

CIS

warwick2001 said:

To confirm what @CIS has very helpfully said, my wife has just finished studying at Uni. We applied for the student exemption at the start of each year. It was applied instantly (well, once the application had being processed), and covered everyday my wife was classed as a student. So from the point she started the course and was classed as a student, we got the discount for every day she was a student. It was NOT retrospectively applied following successful completion of each year.

I will say this was Cumbria County Council, so I can only speak for their procedures, but I would have thought most councils operate in a similar fashion.

All councils should be doing it this way.

Obviously a retrospective claim is different but on an ongoing basis the circumstances for any day should be assumed to be lasting for the remainder of the year unless it's clear that they won't.

So, in theory, if you're a student on 01 April then an exemption should be billed for the whole year. Then if on 02 April you suddenly ceased they should issue a revised bill without the exemption at that point.

Practicalities creep in which the legislation doesn't really allow for and without which you couldn't really manage the billing but applying something only retrospectively would be outside the council's legal powers.

martindow

If the OP has a rental agreement for a period of time to cover the academic year, their student exemption would finish after a couple of months when they abandoned the couse.  Their liability for CT would continue for the rest of the tenancy whether they were living there or not, wouldn't it?

CIS

martindow said:

If the OP has a rental agreement for a period of time to cover the academic year, their student exemption would finish after a couple of months when they abandoned the couse.  Their liability for CT would continue for the rest of the tenancy whether they were living there or not, wouldn't it?

It's not always as straight forward as that - it depends on multiple factors, including the length of the original tenancy. Liability can also change in response to any changes in circumstances (for example, if it swapped from a fixed term to a statutory periodic).