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.

How would you make it fairer.

Is that between 2 of you? I am in a Band A on my own and pay £134 a month, live in a two bed two up two down and don't have a garden.

Ours is £365 per month. Its tough.

Ours is £289.

Depends what area of the country surely? OPs sounds low to me for a 3 bed, we pay £250 a month for a small 2 bed semi

We pay a lot, a bit under £500 I think. We have no beef about what we pay but we have a huge beef about the quality of the services provided for the money and recognise this has a greater impact on the least privileged, paying the lower amounts.

Children's Services have been in and out of special measures for years.
Shortage of SEN places in fit for purpose schools.
Street lights go off at 10.30.
Town Centre is a mess
Green belt being assigned grey belt
Roads full of potholes which are not dealt with
Pavements in need of repair
Rising crime
Unable to comment on elder care
Bins OK but the community recycling centre is now closed Monday to Wednesday.
Libraries are fab
Local Councillors are crap, Residents' Association
One of the wealthiest counties and a privileged borough. Rock on the unitary authorities and let's see if they do better.

This. Which though I whine about it, I see adults and children’s social care as critical services. The former will only get higher too.

This is pointed out to them on every thread they put their whining moan post. But they just ignore facts and keep moaning.

Where did you get that figure from?

Well that's because your landlords were breaking the rules - a separate dwelling has its own council tax, you can't just rent out an annexe as a separate dwelling and claim to be exempt from council tax. That's tax evasion.

https://england.shelter.org.uk/professional_resources/legal/debt/council_tax/chargeable_dwellings

🙄
Presumably you were once one of these ghastly children. Who was educated and received healthcare, maybe you drive on roads that the council tax goes towards maintaining, have access to public services such as libraries, bin collections, benefit from street lighting. Maybe you’ll need social care as you get older.
Yes it could be a fairer system, but it’s the old live together / die alone adage.

All of us using those public services...

Band D in my local area is just over £350 a month😬

pay on square meterage of land you own

I'm a retired public sector worker. When I went home at the end of the day, I hadn't increased the profitv of an organization, I hadn't produced something tangible, so I couldn't point to an item I had made. What I could do however was point out that I had :
Made a different to the lives of several people.
Given advice that would have improved a person's life.
Often went above and beyond so that I could assist a person with something that actually wasn't my job.
No, I don't expect a pat on the back for it, or a fanfare lots of us did precisely that. However I did expect to be paid for it. And it wasn't a fortune although I do get a decent pension.
You could have joined us, if you want.

Point of order, the local goverment pension scheme is a funded penaion scheme. Your council tax is not paying for local government pensions.

You can't change what the council charges, but it may be possible to change your tax band. https://www.gov.uk/challenge-council-tax-band

Compare yours to your neighbours first: https://www.gov.uk/council-tax-bands
I'm in band B (£155 a month), the neighbours in a mirror copy of my house are in band D (£200). I'm worried they'll one day appeal it and everyone goes up to D!

The freeholder would pay (so in the case of a block of flats the total land tax for the building would be divided between units and form part of the ground rent).

The thing is that it's more expensive to provide services in a sparsely populated area. It's cheaper to provide services to a block of flats than a terrace, a terrace than suburban semis, suburban semis than sprawling mansions with large gardens. So the more land you take up, the more you pay.

Agricultural land and land set aside for nature should be exempted though.

Ours too. It's our second biggest bill behind our mortgage.

Any arrears will not fall to the next person to occupy your old property; the council would do everything in its power to track you down and obtain payment

Very good point, it’s the one public sector pension that is self funded I believe?

It does seem to have got expensive. Mine ( band c) is now £130 a month over 12 months with a 25% discount on a 2 bed flat. But some I read on here are horrific

That as may be, it doesn't really help, does it? We took the property in good faith they were either paying the separate council tax or didn't have to.

Ours has risen by 5% to £304 per month. The bulk of it is spent on adult social care & housing, children’s services and schools which has gone up 10% this year, I’m not sure how you can fund that any other way.

Revolting peasants 😂