Rateable value - request for help

pbolding

I have a property where a water meter cannot be installed so the bill is based on the rateable value. For council tax it's band C meaning RV of £52-68k. And yet the water company (and others are similar) says it charges a standing charge plus around £4 per pound of RV a year. Is there some kind of different list of rateable values? A different water company gives an example using an RV of £275. I have asked the water company what RV they are using.

daveyjp

Rateable value has nothing to do with Council Tax. The RV used will be from when the house was built (likely to be a few hundred pounds).  This value used to be on the bills, but in my area it is no longer stated.  Your water company will have the details.

pbolding

Ah so "rateable value" and "value" as used for council tax is different. I see now and many thanks.

grumpy_codger

Why can't the meter be installed? I'm jus curious...

pbolding

Have asked for another survey but it's an old property with pipes buried. Not even sure where the water comes into the house. The only outside stopcock covers three properties. We have one under the sink but not sure if they would install the meter there.

Myci85

We can't have a meter installed due to the location or something that it comes in to our house, but because we asked for one and it isn't our fault we can't have one, they put us on a reduced rate equivalent to what they expect we'd pay on a meter based on size of property and number of occupants. This more than halved what we were paying when it was based on rateable value. 

Bigphil1474

You want an assumed rate if you can. We got a meter fitted last summer as we had just moved in and the bill based on rateable value was gonna be £1,200. While we were waiting for the meter, they put us on an assumed rate of £50 a month as there were just 2 adults in the house. If they couldn't fit a meter we would have stayed on the £50 a month rate not gone back to the £100 a month one. We are actually using about £35 a month now.

lincroft1710

The Rateable Value used was current from 1973 to 1990, when domestic rating was abolished in England, Scotland and Wales. Although the Valuation Lists which showed the RV for every property were available for public inspection, those held by councils and the VOA/Assessor will either have been long destroyed or archived in some long forgotten and inaccessible place. The water companies should still have their copies'


Although water companies were allowed to continue using RVs as a basis for water rate charging, this was originally only supposed to be for a period of 10 years (ie, finishing in 2000)

silvercar

lincroft1710 said:

The Rateable Value used was current from 1973 to 1990, when domestic rating was abolished in England, Scotland and Wales. Although the Valuation Lists which showed the RV for every property were available for public inspection, those held by councils and the VOA/Assessor will either have been long destroyed or archived in some long forgotten and inaccessible place. The water companies should still have their copies'


Although water companies were allowed to continue using RVs as a basis for water rate charging, this was originally only supposed to be for a period of 10 years (ie, finishing in 2000)

 It is continued as the basis for calculations for those who don’t have a water meter, unless they have applied for one and it can’t be fitted. 

Water companies are continually upping the rates for those on non-metered water as an inducement for more people to apply for a water meter. So what may have been cheap, if you had a relatively high number of people vs RV, it’s now less attractive. The old guide of ‘more bedrooms than people a meter will be cheaper’ is now outdated, should probably be ‘bedrooms less 1 vs number of people’.

Albermarle

silvercar said:

lincroft1710 said:

The Rateable Value used was current from 1973 to 1990, when domestic rating was abolished in England, Scotland and Wales. Although the Valuation Lists which showed the RV for every property were available for public inspection, those held by councils and the VOA/Assessor will either have been long destroyed or archived in some long forgotten and inaccessible place. The water companies should still have their copies'


Although water companies were allowed to continue using RVs as a basis for water rate charging, this was originally only supposed to be for a period of 10 years (ie, finishing in 2000)

 It is continued as the basis for calculations for those who don’t have a water meter, unless they have applied for one and it can’t be fitted. 

Water companies are continually upping the rates for those on non-metered water as an inducement for more people to apply for a water meter. So what may have been cheap, if you had a relatively high number of people vs RV, it’s now less attractive. The old guide of ‘more bedrooms than people a meter will be cheaper’ is now outdated, should probably be ‘bedrooms less 1 vs number of people’.

I also found that despite being at the time a 4 adult household, and using what I thought was a lot of water, it turned out when the meter was fitted that we were using significantly less than average. So a double saving.
With the average being higher than expected, I can only assume that lots of households make no attempt to save water, and waste lots of it. 

lincroft1710

silvercar said:

lincroft1710 said:

The Rateable Value used was current from 1973 to 1990, when domestic rating was abolished in England, Scotland and Wales. Although the Valuation Lists which showed the RV for every property were available for public inspection, those held by councils and the VOA/Assessor will either have been long destroyed or archived in some long forgotten and inaccessible place. The water companies should still have their copies'


Although water companies were allowed to continue using RVs as a basis for water rate charging, this was originally only supposed to be for a period of 10 years (ie, finishing in 2000)

 It is continued as the basis for calculations for those who don’t have a water meter, unless they have applied for one and it can’t be fitted. 

.

Yes, the plan that every domestic property would have a water meter by the year 2000 fell way behind target