Council Tax Rebranding help please

princess23

I wonder if someone could help please. I have acquired my late parents bungalow. On the street all of the properties they are all in the same council tax band but after looking up details they vary inside from the smallest being 78m2 upto 120m2 . Would this be worth investigating further to see if the current band could be decreased as the property sits in the middle of these measurements or are the differences so small to be concerend about. Secondly how far back if i did take this further could i expect to claim for in terms of back dating the overpayments or is it down to the individual councils. Thank you for any help and advice you can offer.

FrugaiMacDugal

Have a word with occupier of 78m2 house, they may have investigated this earlier, if not, then work your way up in m2.

sheramber

Have the bigger houses had extensions built?

lincroft1710

You don't say which band the bungalow is in. With such a range of sizes in the same band and your bungalow being in the middle, there is a possibility that the larger bungalows (including yours) being underassessed. You would need to look at the bands of other bungalows of a similar age and type in the area to make an informed opinion of the likelihood of your band being too high or too low.

Usually if a band is reduced, the reduction is backdated, either to when CT first came into being or if a later date, when the property first became liable for CT. However some councils no longer hold CT payment records beyond 6 years, so that is the limit of any refund of overpayment. Where a property had been occupied by a deceased person, then any refund would be payable to that person's estate

princess23

Thank you for taking the time to help me on this. To answer a question that someone asked the majority of the bungalows are a Band D with the only exception being two larger ones that you can clearly see have been extended/modernised which are a band E. The bungalows were built back to 1950-s and were self built. As my house has not been sold since my parents purchased i have no way of knowing what the value would be back then to look into the council tax band.

lincroft1710

1991 sales info is not in the public domain, the earliest date would be 1994. If you can find any sales on the Land Registry site from 1994 to 1998 I may be able to extrapolate the sale price to 1991 values

Band D for an approx 100 sq metre bungalow does not sound excessive unless it is in an area of very cheap housing.