To not understand why council tax in London is so cheap

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

This is based on a ridiculously small sample size. My 4 bed house up north costs me £180 a month. Friends 3 bed in London is £90.

Why is it so much cheaper? A few other London base mates reported low council tax rates too (but not that low).

Is London cheaper? Why council tax when everything else is so expensive?

I pay £75 per month for a 2 bed flat in a deprived area of South London. That is with the single person discount, so without would be £100.

So, Wandsworth was able to set the lowest council tax in the country. I don't know if they still get the relief nowadays

They must do, unless they magically pay a lot less for all their services than other boroughs.

Our crappy little flat n Dorset was £400 a month when we last lived in it 8 years ago

Just make sure you're paying the correct tax for your house, I wasn't and ended up with a nice refund thankyouverymuch.

100 quid for a bedsit here and it goes up from there and the place I live the average salary is 19k! Dont live in London though

I used to stay in a flat share in Glasgow (tenement building). My work then took me to London and I had to manage an exclusive company let in Mayfair, London. I was absolutely gobsmacked when I learned that I had to pay more for a two bed crummy flat in a tenement ("worth" 70k at that time) than the resident of the palatial 2 bed ("worth" at that time 10 years ago 2million) flat in one of the most expensive parts of London.

Wandsworth targets its spending quite carefully the cynical might suggest looking at votes per pound . For example, its Hearing Impaired Service is very good (although about to be merged with the Visually Impsired Service to save money, so we'll see how that goes...) but services for the elderly have been cut quite badly. Primary schools are generally OK (some are very good but tend to be faith schools with very restrictive admissions policiesand/or have teeny tiny catchment areas covering a few streets) but variable and not a patch on those in neighbouring Richmond (and they regularly don't have enough places for all the children due to start Reception in any given year, even given that many of the local middle class parents pay for private education so the number due to start Reception is artificially low to begin with).

I wonder if several of the london boroughs are cheaper as they are the ones the politicians live in

I'm in Wandsworth, 4 bed terrace, mine is about 45/month. But that figure does include the single person element. I've just looked on the council's website and ours appears to have gone down by a few quid this year - 2012/2013.

Think I should change the thread title to why is Wandsworth council tax so cheap.
Really obvious now that it is not the same for everyone.

Wandsworth has some hellish areas for gang issues (think where the So Solid Crew came from, or for those who know the area, the Doddington, the Kambala and the Winstanley just to name those in the north); it's not all green and leafy, though I can easily imagine there are many who rarely start beyond the affluent bits.

The services in the borough, even with the shortcomings listed on this thread, are no worse than neighbouring boroughs.

I think Westminster is pretty cheap as well, second cheapest after Wandsworth. It always used to be.

yy to Doddington and Winstanley. I won't even drive through them. Some bits of Putney, round the Arndale and on the Wandsworth Road are just as frightening. The contrast between them and Northcote is staggering.

Earlier thread about "How does Wandsworth do it?"

SIL has just bought a flat on the Kambala, the bit they are on is actually completely fine, but the next bit along is a bit scary

Gosh - there is some real variety in costs here. We live on a one bed flat and pay £142 pcm!

Ours is £114 for a 1 bed in East London - I wish it was cheaper!

Although we pay ours in 10 monthly installments rather than 12 (not sure why) so it would be less if it was every month.....

About £110 a month for a one bed flat in Portsmouth.

But the ludicrously ancient setting of council tax bands means it won't go up at all when we move to a 4-bed terrace with nearly 3x the space...

DialsMavis - Kambala's alright, they have done so much work around there and it is a nice place now. I think when you get to the other side of Price's it isn't so hot, but there is so much being built along the river towards Wandsworth Bridge now, and it's a much safer area now than, say, 10 years ago.

SlackSally - It's crazy isn't it. When the bands were done, my house was in what was a pretty shit part of Wandsworth, thus we are in Band D. The property prices where we are are crazy and have risen completely disproportionately to some other parts in the borough.

We live in an utter shithole (Croydon) and pay 1200 a year...nearly as much as Richmond and Kingston.

We get bugger all for that 1200 as well. The roads are full of potholes, there's no kerbside collection of bulky waste, so fly-tipping is rife. SALT and OT funding has been withdrawn, SN transport is due to be phased out, no free nappies and continence services for under-fives, no garden waste collection, zero respite care, SureStart funding has been withdrawn this year, so our centre will have to be volunteer run or face closure, youth services have been cut to nothing, or withdrawn completely (mates work for the council in YS)

From what I can see, all the money ends up funding shiney new office blocks, which then stay empty and boarded up...they're busy pulling down the last remnants of historic Croydon in order to do this as well.

/end rant/

Forgot to mention...our $1200 is for a tiny 2-bed terrace.

Wandsworth council house rents are very high and have just gone up by 10% this year (again). Many 3 bed houses are over £200 per week (which I know is still cheaper compared with renting privately) and they get this extra money from housing benefit. I wish they would charge more CT rather than priding themselves on being the cheapest and provide a better service for residents.