To be pissed off my council tax is higher than my neighbours?

[IHaveOtherNames]

Just had my new council tax bill which has increased. After looking into it, I've discovered that mine one other house in the street are in a different CT band to the rest.

I live in a 3 bed end terrace. It is slightly bigger, square footage wise than some of the others but certainly not the biggest. My ndn has a similar sized house but 4 bed and theirs is lower ct! How does it work??

They might have had an extension since it was awarded.

It's based on house value. If you doubt yours is worth more than the neighbours you can ask the council to reconsider the banding.

Back in 1993 when this was all decided they just drove around each house listing what they thought it was worth. Contact your council or the VOA if you think you're in the wrong band.

They may decide your story in right and increase everyone else's!!

But yes ring and ask

You can ask to be recategorised. Also you can apply for a refund of overpaid ct.

I have this, my terraced 3 bed is a band d and both my neighbour's identical houses on either side are a band c.

I contacted the local Land Valuation who set the bands but if you don't appeal within six months of moving in in our area it is just tough.

They refused to re-rate my property and just stated that it was rated correctly as far as they were concerned. My neighbour's homes' are still band c and I've paid thousands of pounds more CT than them over the last 10 years.

I hope you can get yours adjusted but be prepared for them to refuse. I don't mind paying tax and don't object to the amount I pay, it is feeling that I'm doing so unfairly that is annoying.

I wouldn't want everyone's to go up

I didn't know you could ask them to recatigorise, I'll look into it. Thanks.

I successfully had my house recategorised in the past.

You can ask the council to be re-banded. We were because our ndn in an identical house was paying a band lower than us. Initially they refused. Then we got a phone call saying they'd changed their minds. It's worth doing - we got a backlog of payments back for the difference and now pay £30 less per month. Have a look on your local council website to see if you can apply.

www.gov.uk/council-tax-appeals/challenge-your-band

someone down the road from us complained their band was too high. The result - ours went up. We went to appeal showing them house prices from when house sold etc and still lost.

About three years ago I noticed that out of 60 identical house about 2 or 3 were in a lower council tax band. I asked for mine to be reconsidered - mine didn't change but just checked the other houses and they are all the same now, bet they wouldn't be pleased with me!

How do you check what bands other peoples' houses are in?

There's such a mix of houses on our street, it's quite odd. I think there's 16 houses, one terraced row, then there's 2x2 semi detached and a couple of detached. At least 3 of the houses are 4 bedrooms. Only the 2 end terraces are in the higher band. It makes no sense really, ours is certainly worth less than some of the others.

Our was rebanded after we moved in; our neighbour converted the basement. The council said the person who carries out the works doesn't "suffer" the rebanding but if it subsequently changes hands after alterations / extensions then they will come out and check. We got rebanded to the next band up.

The only alterations the house has had was changing it from a 4 bed to a 3 bed, converting the 4th into a bathroom. I'm not sure when this was done and there was no extention.

I got ours rebanded down - our house had been the show home and I think when the first people bought it from the developers they bought it including decor/carpets/curtains/kitchen/bathrooms, whereas the rest were empty, so the price looked artificially high.
We bought it for less than it was worth too which helped.
I just wrote to the council and got a letter saying they had regarded us with a cheque for 6 months rebate!

bigbluebus follow the link above from purple and enter your postcode.

When DH (then dp) first moved in together into a tiny one bedroomed flat, I accidentally opened the council tax bill for the flat downstairs, which was bigger (the bills were addressed to 'the occupier', the flats had the same number but ours was flat 'A'). Our council tax was a band higher than the other flat which didn't seem right given the size difference. I queried it with the council, turned out they had the addresses the wrong way round, our flat went down a band, and the other went up. Felt a bit guilty about the neighbours' bill increasing but at least we were paying the correct rate

Don't be a plonker, yes unfair but they won't put yours down, they'll increase everyone else's!

Major why am I being a plonker if you rtft you'll see that people do have theirs lowered.

This has been in the press before now. Very often the council responds by moving all the neighbours up to your band so be prepared for being very unpopular indeed if that happens!

www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/council-tax-bands-change has some useful tips.

We're in a four bed semi. Our previous owners and current next door neighbours both had extensions around the same time, extending each property from a two bed to four bed. When we acquired the property ours was remanded from a C to an E. Our next door neighbours are still paying a C band! We've been told that their property will only be rebanded when the current neighbours move on. Seems completely unfair to me. But I don't think we'd get anywhere challenging it.

I found Martin Lewis' website useful when looking to see if we were paying too much. Turns out we are paying the same as similar properties in the next street so have left it so no success story here, but you might find the website useful: www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/council-tax-bands-change