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

[Notmycircusnotmyotter]

My local council took £232 in direct debit today for council tax. I'll be honest, I don't budget to the pound, so was shocked when I saw it and assumed they had wrongly taken off my single person discount. But nope. £232 is what 75% of the council tax charge is for my 3 bed terrace.

WTAF. This feels insanely high.

please don't tell me all about bankrupt councils and adult social care. I've heard it. I know.

My point is how are ordinary people paying these sorts of bills? I'm a single parent of two on a decent wage and it stings.

I think it depends where you live ? I have a 25% discount as single and I pay £142 month now for living in a 3 bed in York

Our council tax is our biggest outgoing. When we bought our house in 2001 it was £870 a year. It is now £4850! We are a band G but shouldn’t be. I have appealed it but they told me if they dropped our band they would have to do the whole road and they are not going to do that as they would loose too much money. What annoys me is that a £1.6m house with an annexe and land 2 mins from our house is also a band G and our house isn’t even worth the point 6. It was valued before it was built. Really grinds my gears!

Mine is 160 with the single person discount:( bills do not work well for single income households.

I wish I could reform local government. The waste is terrible. Councillors - who were never meant to be career people - earn a very decent sum - I think it’s £10k for doing hardly anything - plus more if they hold positions. And county or city councillors can be raking in £30k+ and extra if have a position. It’s a disgrace.

The sen spends are out of control. The taxi bills are horrendous. There must be another way. Likewise care homes - I would build council-run homes. Good but basic with no frills. No paying private providers.

And as for political posturing - grants to random groups etc - I would outlaw this. Core functions only.

Both.

Mine is around the £160 mark for a 7 bed with detached double garage and shed in the sprawling countryside. Its insane how different areas can affect the prices.

Are public sector workers meant to work for free?

I live in a tiny 2-bed basement flat and my council tax is 280 pm.

Well under the old rates system every house had its own rateable value so houses in the same street could be of different values. When the rates were set for the year a calculation would be applied to each one. I actually think it was a better system.

And there's me moaning that mine has gone up to £180 a month.

The worst councils are those where Reform got in, lying they would reduce bills but actually massively increasing them. Despite it all, they've just spent £12k planting red and white flowers in a George's cross on a roundabout in county Durham. Yep, £12k spaffed on a roundabout. Don't vote Reform.

Mine is £100 a month for a 2 bed flat in Hackney, with a 25% discount. I think it's band B. Not too different to previous years.

I pay £150 for a tiny one bed flat, so double that for 3 bed house sounds normal to me. But yes, CT is daylight robbery and the area I live in is utter shithole. It literally stinks of shit, schools falling apart, rubbish everywhere, potholes and what not. Can’t wait to move..

That's insane but you must have a salary to match so not sure it impacts more?

Interesting to hear what Sir John Major said, reported on Newsnight, that successive governments are failing to plan for our ageing society and a desperate crisis is looming.

The reality is as a country we do not pay enough tax. If we want the levels of social care they have in the Baltic countries and Europe thenwe’re faced with higher taxes.

The only source of money is tax: VAT, corporation tax, inheritance tax and personal tax. That is our contract with the State.

Otherwise we have the social unfairness of the US, and brutal levels of poverty that exist there.

Councils take the council tax in ten payments over the year. Ring them up and tell them to take it over twelve months which takes some of the sting out of it. Apparently it will be twelve payments by law from April 2027. It’s your money not the council’s.

its not the council who band the houses, you get the valuation office to decide and they don't lose any money as they are not collecting council tax

I got my house rebounded - just had to show 5 other houses locally that were lower band and similar size and bedrooms

Tho the Diff between B and a one bed flat (friend) and C 3 bed semi (mine) in same town is only 300 a year - I was so so suprised

I wish mine was only £230!

Gosh this is a reality check- I thought mine was bad at 185!!

Why ?

I was all set to agree with you as we pay over £4300 a year, no we aren’t millionaires, we live in an area that is extortionately high, top 3 in the country.

This is a daft comment though, we pay for state services, services that have to be run by someone and we’d be lost without. They aren’t high salaries, they’re vital services.

Where is everyone living for such high council tax? Mines £150 and I complained because it was much cheaper the year before

Well, while we'd be pretty ;pissed offvhere in Runnymede to see our CT bills rise to 'pay for Spelthorne', in reality we're both going to get hammered because of Woking :(

Especially hard as a single adult OP! It's tricky when you can split it in half with a partner but completely different when you can't split any of the bills with anyone! I feel you