Advice on officially splitting house into 2 to enable selling of one.

theoretica

Council tax is (almost) always the responsibility of the residents, not the owners.  As I said above, if your parents are over 65 they should apply to be exempt from council tax (at least before your grandmother went into care) under the 'granny annex' exemption.

Being charged separate council tax won't mean that you will definitely get permission to sell the two parts separately - the systems aren't nearly as joined up as that!

CIS

theoretica said:

Council tax is (almost) always the responsibility of the residents, not the owners.  As I said above, if your parents are over 65 they should apply to be exempt from council tax (at least before your grandmother went into care) under the 'granny annex' exemption.

Being charged separate council tax won't mean that you will definitely get permission to sell the two parts separately - the systems aren't nearly as joined up as that!

The Class W exemption is dependent on the property having been banded under Article 3, rather than Section 3. The Article 3 banding would need to be established before the exemption could be applied (amongst the other criteria).

CIS

djewson said:

HampshireH said:

I'm probably completely off the mark with this 

But if you own the property and your family have been living in it as a single household, how did the council know to bill your parents for their extension/annexe/dwelling as effectively your sole occupants.

Is the unoccupied bill now in your name?

Presumably the council tax bill would have been in your grans name  and then defaulted back to you when she moved out or did they contact the council to register it in their name?

I'm just confused as to how the council suddenly knew to bill them seperately. Our Council can't do anything fast so for all this to happen in half an hour is quite amazing

From an outsider if definitely sounds like they have been living seperately and independently of each other so can see why the council think so too 

Absolutely agree with you there

The whole house was in grans name 
It was always paid a year in front by my parent's rather than my gran for financial reasons.

This all came about when she had to go into care 
The house is still apparently exempt due to her being in care even though the house isn't actually hers 
We assume it's still classed as her home for whatever purposes

But yes 
Has been a family home since my parents moved in with my gran about 15 years ago to help take care of her, they built the extension to give them all a bit more room and privacy.

They were stunned at the council contacting them within that hour of my gran being moved into the home.

The council initially asked about the house probably looking to take it to pay for her care only to be told it wasn't actually her house.

My parents answered everything honestly and explained the whole situation etc 

Only to end up where we are now 

We assume the CT exemption is what triggered it and they wanted to pull sime money in to help pay for her care from somewhere 

It still annoys us that no one from the council has ever contacted us once even though they had our name and address to do so

But chose to do all this via my parents when the property isn't even theirs to make any choices or decisions about it

Unless she was (and still is) the owner or tenant of the part of the property she was living in then the Class E exemption should not apply.