Council tax bill - is this wild or are yours insanely high too?

I thought the council tax rise was capped around 5%. How can it possibly have jumped that much?

The issue is also how unfair the council tax reduction schemes are across the country, now there is no longer a nationwide CT support scheme. All councils are free to make up their own rules for who pays what.

Therefore, in some areas, people on purely UC/PIP income pay nothing, whereas those earning the equivalent wage pay full whack. In other areas, those on UC/PIP pay just as much as those with wages.

I am a debt advisor based over 3/4 council areas, and the above is a frequent scenario. It's ridiculous that this was allowed to happen.

I reported a massive pothole the week before last.

I reported it on Monday morning, got a text on Tuesday afternoon saying they'd inspected it and it was a priority repair. When I went out on Thursday, it had not only been fixed, but they'd resurfaced about 30' of road, the full width of the northbound side.

When they fix potholes on our local roads, the repairs only seem to last a few weeks before they start to break up again, but this was a main road and looks as it's been done to a much higher standard.

I sthink people would be more accepting, if there was some clarity about how council tax payments are arrived at, in different areas and how the banding system actually works. There seem to be so many anomalies in n £00the way these things re calculated and why there is so much variation across the country.

We moved eighteen months ago, downsizing. Council tax then was less than £200 a month for a three bed house. Less than two years later, it’s £244 a month and the increase this year was in excess of 5%. We are rapidly getting to the point where we cannot cope with more increases.

Mine is over £400 too…

My MIL is on pension credit, and even she has to pay 20% of her council tax. The council used to give 100% reduction for people on pension credit, but they don't any more, it's been cut to 80%.

I get the discount and single person one

It's allowed because it isn't robbing.

Part of the problem is that people don't see a direct benefit to themselves and therefore assume that nobody is benefitting. So you saw your mum not receiving care and therefore assume that nobody does. In reality, a small number of people with extremely high and costly need do. Increasingly the neediest cost more, so those receiving care become fewer in number overall because the money covers fewer, more expensive people.

Things that everyone sees, like grass verges, potholes being fixed etc, get cut in favour of things that very few people see and directly benefit from. Whether this is right or wrong is another debate, but it's true.

What isn't true is that your bin gets collected every three weeks. You mean your general waste bin. Same as mine. With other bins collected weekly for recyclable items. In the old days the general waste bin got collected weekly. Now it's changed but the service is no worse for it.

If you don't pay attention to your outgoings - you say yourself you ignored this bill - you can hardly blame anyone else.

OHHHH

Just looked up a friends house, which is a 6 bed, 6 bath detached house with large gardens....it's band E. So they pay less than us, even though their house is twice the size. WHAT????

I live in a cheaper area of my town in SE - I pay £141 including single person discount

Mine is £100 per month. That's on an A band with a 25% discount & over 52 weeks not 10 months which is about 44 weeks.
It's too much for what we get

I've just had a look to see what our banding is, and what our neighbours bandings are. Our house is band F. We have 5 bedrooms. Both neighbours either side are also F. But one of those is a 3 bed, and one is a 4 bed. I then looked up FIL's house which is a 6 bed HUGE mansion.... also band F.

WTF?

"Those public sector salaries" are a tiny part of what council tax has to pay for. You referred to not wanting to hear about what it's paying for - but those things are an astonishing and rapidly rising cost. The services people expect cost a LOT.

True about the parking, but I bet you get public transport that is poor to non-existent in many rural areas!

Even in my medium sized town, public transport is pisspoor other than in the town centre. We only have a half-hourly bus service and only between 9.15 am and 5.45pm, Mon-Sat. If you have a hospital appointment, it's either 3 buses or 2 buses and a train each way, and impossible to get there before 10am if you're lucky. I had to have a biopsy taken under local anaesthetic recently and felt too rough afterwards to get buses back. The taxi cost me £42.

A rubbish collection only every three weeks?? At that point, you'll just have to take your rubbish to the tip! I also think bi-weekly is insane. In my area it's once a week.

I pay about 280 for a 3 bed bungalow in kent

Yes, they take up a quarter of the bill, but of course the councils never mention them. It's always to fault of children and adults who need social care.

Here in Scotland, water costs are included on our council tax bills. We pay for the supply of water but not for dealing with waste water as we have a septic tank. With the regular council tax part, our bill for the next year is just under £1900.

Services in Scotland are terrible so we begrudge every penny just now.

Ours is about £350 now. Seems extortionate. We are in a 5 bed terrace.

Ours has gone up 7.5% this year. It’s £4411 per annum. Last year I asked to pay it over 12 months (£367 per month), not the 10 months they usually do to make it easier to stomach.

I found a bill from 10 years ago and my council tax was £1395. This year it’s £2,235. It went up £10 a month every year and it never felt bad but seeing the difference now feels steep. Especially when roads have more craters than the moon and bin collections are currently being looked at to move to three weekly instead of bi weekly.

Same here - ours has gone up by 9.5%.

Please do let us know your reputable source for the 25% figure you quote.
Also please do let us know when potholes were quickly (I assume you mean quickly as they do all get filled eventually and it’s the speed with which you have an issue) in modern times with modern levels of traffic and weight of vehicles.