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

To clarify, generally I'd be very surprised if there many 2 bedroom flats in my city, outwith the Social Housing sector, which are less than Band E-many will be higher.

I own a rental flat in a traditional Victorian tenement of 16 flats which is one bedroom with an internal kitchen and a shared back green and is Band B. I've no idea what Band A might be. That flat is a nice enough flat but nowhere near as good a neighbourhood as the Band F flat. The Band F flat is a Grade B Listed Building in a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Generally I'd be very surprised if any 2 bedroom flats in my city were less than E-many will be higher.

Wow

I know it’s done on prices as well from years ago

but I thought rough guide was

a studio flat
b 1 /2 bedroom flat
c 2/3 bed house
d 4 bed house

what would you live in in an a or b @PhaedraTwo in your area ?

This and the other big cost to councils is SEND costs which have risen exponentially. All the parents insisting that we need more special schools, transport to school in taxis, more children should get EHCP's, more 1:1 TA's in school, all well and good but the money has to come from somewhere and council tax is one of the places.
We have an ageing population and also a rapidly increasing proportion of our young people are too disabled to work at all. The care and support burden is incredibly high now.

Gosh, I was moaning about mine going up to £164! Feel quite lucky now tbh, looking at some of these amounts. 3 bed ex LA semi in the East Midlands.

How can you be in band e in a 3 bed terrace

where I am band c in a 3 bed semi

Depends where you live. I'm Band F in a 2 bedroom flat.

Jesus.

They won’t because there is not a CT discount for these things like there’s a discount for, for example, being a student or having had to move somewhere else to receive care.

Your property banding determined by the VOA which you can challenge by making an appeal to the VOA if you think that your property should not have been band G due to these circumstance for eg.

Yup, it's been going up a lot the past few years, like everything. I remember a time counting up all the bills and they were affordable but now outgoings are almost double. Pre and post covid.

Send them to Essex please

I lived on a private close once where we had our own street lighting, repairs, cleaners etc for which we paid a hefty service charge. Council didn't give us any council tax discount though.

i missed your reply

same. Well one house is a D. Rest are C

yet all the same

Sometimes they are wrongly assessed when built. A house we rented once I got the council tax lowered when I moved in. Didn’t save me much sadly but my LL got a big amount back. Years later I saw the original plan for the housing estate and the plot number of the house we rented was marked as a 4 bed detached double garage…..when built it was a 3 bed with parking space.

Thanks for that list my area and my home town hundreds of miles away are on the high list. But also to note I also pay a parish council charge so higher than the list states, whereas family in hometown don’t have that additional cost at least.

I don’t think that they should be allowed to raise council tax by more that the average wage increase (which I believe was around 3%). It’s very unfair that people are expected to pay a higher and higher proportion of their wages on council tax every year.

Same here. Ours is a bit lower as we are band D.

Similar here , mine would work out about the same if I was the only adult. Our water bill also had the 50% increase.

Tbf we are now at a level where we can’t afford anything else to go up. after the utilities and the mortgage and food there’s not much left.

We don’t really do anything each month, we haven’t had a holiday in two years and when we did it was only out of season on a caravan park. We have nothing planned for this year and we no longer do a big Christmas, just a few bits of nice food.

My little car was bought second hand and is over 16 years old. to save fuel I only use it for essential short journeys. I used to pop in and out a few times a week running errands, getting a coffee but that’s all stopped now. We go out once a fortnight at the weekend together to do something free like a beach or country park.

This bank holiday is a good example. My DP is away working so I have the weekend to myself. I’ve got the food shop done today. I might pop out in the car Monday to a nearby park. But apart from that I will be at home, doing cheap hobbies so tv, garden, pets, books, crafts all things that don’t cost anything. I didn’t expect to be living like this in my 50s.

Yeah but they also got a bowl of gruel a day, luxuries the tax payer shouldn't be funding

There's all sorts of reasonable discussions you might have about pensions or whatever, it would be daft to say "every council is spending its money perfectly".

But if people who used to live to 75 are now generally living to 85 then that's just more expensive.

If you spent your windfall from North Sea oil on tax cuts instead of investing it in a Wealth Fund that's more expensive.

If you put up trade barriers with your neighbours that is more expensive.

The fact "you don't want to hear about these things" doesn't make them untrue.

If we keep making bad decisions as a country then we'll keep getting the same results.

Disabled (working) single mum. Not entitled to single person discount due to 19yo ds working min wage job.
When I was on tax credits, there was an automatic reduction in CT for being on PIP. Now there's no such reduction.

Recently found out that I can apply for a reduction in CT banding if the house has room for a wheelchair to manoeuvre (it does) and if adaptations have been made to accommodate my disability (there have been adaptations, paid for by a grant from the LA).

Still, I've had to apply for the reduction, and have to pay £300 per month while they decide whether my disability is adequate enough to warrant it.

It's crippling (bad taste pun intended) me!

How can you be in band e in a 3 bed terrace

where I am band c in a 3 bed semi

seems a lot !!! Mine is 217 a month but 25% off so £162 a month

weirdly tho I just checked online and all the houses on my road are c apart from one that is d and is 5 houses up - but I don’t get why its a d as same size as mine /many others

yet some are 2 bed and still C along my road

Our council is 're-wilding' most parks, for the bee's apparently- by that, they no longer cut half the grass and let weeds crumble the paths/play park areas. We do have lots of dandelions now though, they even re wild areas they recently upgraded into things like dog agility or kids play areas around parks activity trails- its very impressive. Nothing quite like being jagged by nettles of thistles whilst you cross the wooden stepping stones.

We're £372 across 10 months in Scotland. I think what frustrates me more, is that when there's a shift as the population sizes decrease, we won't see a reduction. But also, as a household we earn well above the national average, but after all our bills and childcare, we're left with absolutely nothing- we haven't been on holiday since before Covid, we haven't got savings, yet we earn what would be considered by many as a good wage. Yes we have high expenses, but our mortgage increased by £400pm last October, our food shop has doubled, all our bills have increased, and our actual wages have stayed all in all, static. It is worrying! *Editing to add, we also have to pay a £70 factoring fee every 6 months + whatever random costs they add on for 'upkeep' of the area, and now pay for our Garden bin £50 per year, for it to be emptied March-Nov

Yes. Same where I am. They get re-banded when sold. Also after an extension (alerted with planning permission).

That doesn’t seem fair!!