Council Tax band - question about VOA decision

LCT2024

Hoping for advice from anyone with experience of querying a band with the Valuations Office (VOA).

In short:
- Bought a property knowing it is banded as Council Tax H, but knowing there are more than 10 houses on our street that have larger square footage and larger plots/acreage which are all banded as council tax G.
- We knew we may loose our request to be reduced to council tax G but have nothing to loose by trying. Logically our property is smaller by 500 sq ft and 0.10 acre that the others I mention on our street.
- Our property is worth around 20% less than the other properties I mention, this is clear in recent sold house prices.
- The VOA have come back and refused our request and said we are band H but given no detail as to why.

Am I missing something obvious here as to why our property is being treated differently given we are considerably smaller.

We may appeal, but wanted to do our homework first.

Many thanks for any advice.

lincroft1710

1. When did you buy the house?

2. What is your basis for saying the Band G houses are larger?

3. Are these houses of the same type and age as yours?

4. Are these sold prices, actual sales of the houses you are comparing with and if so how recent are they? 

The garden size tends not to influence banding.

LCT2024

Thanks for your response - answers below:

1. When did you buy the house? Sep 2023

2. What is your basis for saying the Band G houses are larger? They are larger in size, square footage. Ours is approx 2600 sq feet and the one that are G are between 2900-3750 square feet in size, so considerably larger.

3. Are these houses of the same type and age as yours? Yes, similar age and style, 1920/30's.

4. Are these sold prices, actual sales of the houses you are comparing with and if so how recent are they? These houses have all sold in the last 4 years, they have sold for between £100,000-£300,000 more than ours, ours was £950k.

lincroft1710

£950K seems a low price for a Band H, unless your house needed a lot of money spending on it. If you made a formal appeal within 6 months of buying the house, then as the VOA aren't playing ball, would suggest you take it to a Tribunal.

LCT2024

lincroft1710 said:

£950K seems a low price for a Band H, unless your house needed a lot of money spending on it. If you made a formal appeal within 6 months of buying the house, then as the VOA aren't playing ball, would suggest you take it to a Tribunal.

Thanks for the advice - it does seem we are being fobbed off.

LCT2024

Just an update on this for anyone in the same position, after appealing I'm pleased to say our band was finally reduced to band G, it took several months and lots of information gathering but was worth the work involved.

We were given an appeal date, but in reality the VOA reversed their decision a month prior to that date based on our written eveidence.

They key was to lay out the data for several other compartive properties (I found 15 strong examples) in a simple table - good luck!