Unoccupied Home Council Tax Bill

SamsonTroll

I have lived at the same address as a home owner for over 24years.  During that time I have paid my council tax on time via DD every single month.

I advertised the property for sale in April 2024 as I was ready to move on after 24 years.    I moved out in September 2024 as I had a buyer for my cottage who wanted to purchase the home and the contents – so all furnishing were left in situ.  I was delighted they wanted all the furniture as it saved me having to sell/dispose of it all. Unfortunately half way through the sale process the buyer pulled out of the sale. 

After an abundance of further viewings, offers & retractions I decided to remove/sell the furniture in Jan/Feb 2025.  During all this time as I was still the owner of the property I continued to pay my regular monthly council tax & other utility / house insurance bills.  While at the same time paying all the household bills on my new home!

Finally and overjoyed my home sold in September 2026!!  Thinking I could now put all the above behind me, clear the decks and move on and stop paying bills for a house I hadn’t lived in for 2yrs…… Imagine my despair when in September of 2026 I receive a bill from Kirklees Council stating I owe over £1500 in unoccupied home council tax (?)  I had never even heard of such a tax and was utterly shocked and thought this had to be some kind of mistake, as I knew I had been paying council tax on my home from the day I moved in some 24yrs ago. 

I could not understand how there was a penalty over and above the council tax I was already paying it made no sense and really worried me.  I was convinced it was a mistake.   I contacted Kirklees Council to be told it was in fact correct. That I did owe this money and it had to be all paid in full within a short time frame or I would be summons to court and / or bailiffs could come to my current home address.   I can not tell you how frightened I have been, I’m worried sick – I physically do not have this money and cannot understand why I need to pay more council tax for a home I didn’t live in.

I am a 60year old woman soon to retire and am pleading with you look at my case – my house was genuinely for sale with from April 2024 – Sept 2026 : they have all records of viewings/offers etc…   I’m not a landlord – just a 60year old woman who couldn’t sell a house for 18months +, but desperately wanted to!!

I have since written to Kirklees Council explaining exactly this situation as I can not pay this money and don’t want to be taken to court.  I’m scared and beside myself.  I attached photos of every room with furniture in, proof to show when my home was originally advertised for sale along with Memorandum of Sale from estate agent stating the date of sold STC  - the reply from the Council was that they could ‘set up a payment plan of  £250 per month x 6 months’ ??

I’m 60years old! I physically do not have that much money to pay out to anyone each month, with utility bills going up in October and again in January I can just about afford to live/feed myself NOW.  I’m really scared I’m going to be summons to court, I’m desperate and I’m pleading with you to look at my case and maybe advise me what I can do. 

Ive never missed a council tax payment in my life I’ve paid on time every time and I’m asking for some help please.  

lincroft1710

I regret to say I believe Kirklees are correct. Your home was unoccupied for 24 months and was on the market for sale during that time. The premium becomes due after a property has been unoccupied and on the market for 12 months, which in your case would be payable from Sept 2025.

I have presumed that £1500 would be the standard full year CT amount.

I can only suggest you contact the councillor for the relevant area of Kirklees and ask if they can persuade the council to accept a longer term payment plan. Be aware that being 60 years old will have no bearing on anything, it is no longer considered "old" as it would have been 20 or 30 years ago

p00hsticks

OP - are you living in rented accomodation now ?

If you bought somewhere new, donl' forget that you will have paid additional SDLT (or the Scottish equivalent) on the purchse of your new home which you'l lbe able to claim back when the sale of this house goes through.

Brie

Don't ask for a reduced monthly amount. Tell them that you can't afford the amount they are suggesting.

Back this up by providing an income and expenditure statement to show how much you can afford monthly. Double check your expenditures to ensure there's something hidden in there that isn't really required, or can be eliminated for a year.

You could use the statement of account (see my signature below) as the basis of this so that they are given a comprehensive picture of any "excess" income available. It's this "excess" bit that you will take the future payments from and generally it's accepted that some of the "excess" can be kept by you as savings.

What you must not do is ignore the situation completely. You may need to renegotiate again in the future if your circumstances change, i.e. income goes down on retirement. In my experience councils will be happy if you are cooperating with them. I have seen (England) cases where the payments were spread over 2 years so you hopefully will have some wiggle room.

otb666

We have this on a probate property and think it is the most unfair tax ever introduced where the estate gets punished for suppose proceedable buyers losing their buyers over and over. I cannot see how this is fair. I have recently asked our council if one exemption for this 100% premium follows on or do they run at the same time. As there are two 12 month exemptions that apply. Empty property up for sale and Class F(deceased). They should have changed house buying processes and make Estate Agents more accountable before they introduced this especially in current climate.

SamsonTroll

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82166532#Comment_82166532

I really appreciate your reply. Thank you so much. I wrote to the council via the official appeals process a week ago. I am awaiting a reply as I’m due to pay the full amount by the 13th of October.!!! Well, that ain’t happening. According to the appeal process on the gov/council website, they have up to 2 months to reply. It’s so unfair - I wish I had known about it. I wish the estate agent had mentioned it or even my conveyancing solicitor who I worked with for ever failed sale. I would never have moved out so far in advance.

Jude57

@SamsonTroll

This will be a long post but I'm not around until late tomorrow and I want to help as much as I can right away. I was a Council Tax Recovery Officer for over a decade so I have some experience in this area.

I'm sorry this has come as such a shock and I do understand how frightening it can be when terms like Court and Bailiffs are used if you're not used to them. Please try not to panic and don't be pressurised into anything you haven't thought through.

I'd agree with @lincroft1710 that getting the local Councillor involved is a good idea and you should contact them without delay. Their contact details should be on the Council website. Remember, it's the Councillor for your previous address, not your new address🙂 Getting the Councillor involved means you have someone who can actually walk up to the desk of the person in charge, and that's the person you need contact with because they make the decisions. I'm afraid that the average member of the public simply doesn't have that level of personal access to senior Council officers any more. And it doesn't matter whether you voted for the Councillor or not, it's what they are elected to do, act as intermediaries between the public and the Council.

Can you please clarify whether the property is actually sold, as in the sale is completed in full? You mention the Memorandum of Sale but that's only one step in the process of selling and, depending upon where you are in that process, there may be options available to you. I'll set them out below:

If the sale is NOT complete, have you got a date for exchange of contracts and for completion?

When the sale completes, will there be enough equity coming to you that would clear the Council Tax debt in full?

If the sale is NOT complete yet but when it is there WILL be enough cash to clear the Council Tax debt in full, you could ask your conveyancing solicitor to write to the Council Tax team with a Solicitor's Undertaking that the debt will be cleared in full upon completion of the sale, on condition that recovery action is suspended. The Undertaking is a legally binding agreement that the solicitor will pay the Council. It carries the legal weight of a guarantee.

HOWEVER, if the sale is completed in full and any cash you received has already been used for other things, it's definitely a good idea to complete an income and expenditure statement, plus a list of any other debts though you must bear in mind that Council Tax is a priority debt and should be paid before consumer debts like credit cards or store cards. Make a sensible offer of repayment, by which I mean an amount that you KNOW you can manage to afford every month without fail and send those documents to the Council without delay, preferably via the Councillor.. And, if it's possible, make the first payment of that amount immediately, to show good faith. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people making offers of payment don't follow through by actually paying anything. If you pay what you can reasonably afford and pay it regularly, it's showing the Council that you are prioritising the debt and are determined to clear it.

It's possible that the Council will want to make sure that they can act quickly to recover the debt if you fail to pay and to do this, they may insist on taking the matter to Court and obtaining something called a Liability Order. It's a case heard in the Magistrates Court, not the County Court and does not result in a County Court judgement (CCJ). The Magistrates have no power to decide how much you should pay, their powers are limited to judging whether you are liable or not. You ARE liable, based on what you've posted, and there's no need for you to attend a Court Hearing. Liability Order hearings are basically an administrative hearing and it's done in bulk. To give you an idea, my Council, a small one in the North East, issued 2,000 summonses for Liability Orders every single week of the year. Any arrangements for payment are between the Council and the liable person and you'll already have started sorting that out. As long as you comply with that arrangement or, if your situation changes and you can no longer comply but you continue to engage with the Council, it's very unlikely that they would take any further recovery action. I won't detail what further steps they could take because it isn't relevant at the moment. I just want you to be prepared for the Council insisting on getting the Liability Order as part of an agreement for payment. It's really nothing to worry about, it isn't reported to credit reference agencies (though further recovery action can be reported) and your name isn't published in the paper or online so no-one will know about it. It's as I said, an administrative process that gives the Council further options if you stop paying.

So contact the Councillor immediately, you could copy your post here in an email to them and hopefully they'll get back to you quickly but if you receive any further letters from the Council Tax team, come back and I'll be happy to advise further.