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

I'm raging honestly. Same position 3 bedroom terraced house. I don't know why it's risen so much but it's really grinds my gears. It's not like I'm getting anything new of nice for my money every couple of weeks I have to fight the council to do something about the trash hoarder down the road.

This post made me realise I don't actually know what our council tax is. We moved just a couple months ago so the letter was opened and chucked in the calendar without a thought. £168 a month (over 12) that includes water as in Scotland. That's pretty good going by the answers in this thread.

Council tax makes my blood boil. I know it pays for services blah, blah, blah but quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing that and being expected to just be okay with a wildly expensive bill that goes up every single year without fail. They need to manage their funds better. They get an absolute fortune. I shudder to think what it’ll be five years’ time. I’m already struggling with it and I’m not single!

Don’t @ me coming to the defence of this obscenely high bill, I don’t want to hear it. I’m drained and fed up of working full time all for the vast majority of my wage to go on bills. Too tried and too skint. Had enough. Life shouldn’t be this way.

I am in a 3 bed terrace, and my CT with single person discount is £130pm.
I am on UC so that is further reduced to £30pm.
What band are you? I am band B.

I know that valuations re based on 1992 figures. That’s 34 years ago and doesn’t reflect local and national housing markets.

mine went up 5.2% in total. I was surprised as thought it was 4.99% max. It’s a reform council now. I cannot believe some places have gone up as much as on this thread. What’s the point in having the max 5% in place if they can just ask for it to be lifted? We need some protection from that!

@ForCosyLion also, to be fair, biweekly is ok. More wouldn’t be. I was fuming when they initially implemented it but you can squeeze it down.

Don’t get me started! You have to book to take it to the tip. I’ve only gone twice in one day since they started that. We have a few sites and I went to two of them. We finished the task we were doing at 9.30. They had no slots until 11.30 and 12.30 depending on the site so then I had to wait, couldn’t get a shower and change as I’d get dirty again moving all the rubbish. Imagine if you finished at 2pm, you might not get a slot that day and no point booking before you know if you’ll be done. I’d rather just queue at the tip if necessary. It helps no one and people say the skips are still heaving with rubbish.

they also made it so you have to reverse into the bays which are now at angle. Imagine when your car is laden with shit, having to reverse into an area where you can’t see and people are walking as they’re getting stuff out of the side of their car next to you. Fine if you have a camera like me, impossible if you have an old car like DP.

The trouble with council tax is that most people are having to pay it with income that has already been taxed, so it feels like a double tax. It would better if there was an option to pay it out of your gross wage, before income tax is deducted. This would help younger people who are struggling with rents and mortgages, on top of high council tax.

Council tax should operate like a wealth tax, but it’s so outdated that it doesn’t really

I live abroad and my council tax and property tax equivalent comes out to around £1000/month. Council tax seems super cheap in the UK. But then the services are rubbish there so I guess you get what you pay for.

😂 road repairs i drive across town apologising to my car and I may end up at the drs because my bad back is getting aggravated by the banging into pot holes they arnt tiny they are big unavoidable unless I can switch lanes but when there are other cars on the road I have to take the hit

Ours is about £350 a month for a 3 bed detached (band F). Previously we paid less than half of that for a 3 bed semi in a different area. The jump was ridiculous, our council tax bill takes nearly 2 months of my salary every year. It's the same size property, with the same number of people, using the same amount of services, earning the same money. They should be standardised across the country

I'm in Edinburgh - Band F £358 for a 2 bedroom flat.

It’s worse than that - children’s services is almost entirely spent on children’s social care. So that poster would happily see more children left to be neglected and murdered by abusive parents if it saves her £40 a month. Honestly psychopathic.

London is an expensive city for property as demonstrated by the fact your sister's house is worth a mil. I'd also guess your cheaper property plus high council tax equates to less paid over a lifetime than a more expensive property and lower council tax.

If you can take accommodation out of the equation, I find London extremely reasonable for day to day living as there's a lot of choice where you spend your money. Plus public transport is plentiful.

And their fabulous pensions, flexible working arrangements and annual pay rises!

I’m probably exaggerating but my company hasn’t given a payrise in 4 years

£400 a month here. Bonkers

I'm just under £200 per month (over 10 months) for a band C, 2 bed house in Edinburgh.

This includes my water rates.
Have to pay a wee bit extra for garden waste collection.
Some of the charges seem extortionate.

A lot of councils you pay across 10 months and get two months ‘Free’
Nothing is free you’re just paying for a 12 months across 10.
to reduce the monthly bill you can request to pay it over 12 months if it helps logistics.

We have this on our street. Houses are re-banded when they are sold as I understand it.

My house is band F, others on the street are bands E and G. They are all the same, extended, done up Victorian terraces. Those that are G have had a more recent sale than those that are E and F.

If I were to sell mine tomorrow, it would go up a band due to the amount of work it has had done to it since we bought it.

£341 came out for us this morning. It’s a joke.

One of my neighbours worked quite high up in my local council and is now retired on a nice fat pension he's always bragging about.
DH best friend's father retired from his job at the council on his pension and the next day he returned as a private contractor to them doing the same job but this time earning a lot more so he is being paid twice.
Nothing around here is being fixed - potholes, hedges are overgrown same as and grass areas, no street sweepers etc bins overflowing, hardly and funding for police, fire or anything else.
My neighbour says it's because most of it goes on pensions like his.

Do you not?
Try watching police 24 hours, or whatever it’s called. Poor parenting is hugely responsible.

What has that got to with paying your council tax?

I does seem to have got really high over the last few years along with everything else. I do want to contribute but its hard when so much of what the council does with the money isn't obvious i.e. public services are still constantly cut back, the roads are a mess, bins rarely get emptied, facilities disappear and the general up keep of the place is poor. I understand more than half of what we pay goes to child and adult social care, which it a good use but also somewhat invisible to many people.

Paying a lot out and not seeing the benefit yourself along with dropping quality and quantity for everything else across the board can make you feel a bit hard done by.