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.

Well the vast majority of public sector workers are not raking it in, I can assure you.

Also, I don’t have much sympathy with your shock if you don’t take notice of your bills.

The Times article states that councils paid around £6.7–7 billion into staff pensions in a more recent year, equating to an average of 23.5% of their council tax revenue — i.e. nearly £1 in every £4. Some councils spent over 50% (or even more than 100% in extreme cases) of their council tax income on pension contributions.

And many are on Universal Credit because admin/ executive officer wages are so low.

Yes £232 for small two bed cladded flat i can't even sell, madness

Besides the discussion is council tax which doesn't pay for schooling and nhs.

Some does go towards education and social care impacts the NHS

That’s true, I hadn’t thought about it like that.

Our borough council also gets a lot of revenue from us having to pay to park outside our houses too! I imagine those in rural areas don’t have that.

Those children will one day be working in the services you need ... hospitals, shops, road workers, dentists, trades etc etc.

Mine is over £300 with the discount. It's gone up alot over the last few years.

I work for my local council.

On the 15th of every month they pay my wages and then grab £200 straight back in council tax 😭

Ours is over £300 per month. It's no surprise, although still unpleasant!

@ProudAmberTurtle what ia not true? The biggest spend is social care and pension schemes are far less generous now.

Those are the two options if you want to cut funding to adult social care.

Care in the home should also include house value imo.

Wow. I don't have children but I certainly don't begrudge paying for social care. Do you realise that a lot of the social care for children is paying for children abused/neglected to live in foster care or other placements to keep them safe.
You were once a child and unless privately educated, then other people's taxes were funding your educational at that point
Also how much do you get in pension, you may not actually be a net contributor overall. If you use the roads, nhs, get your bins collected etc you may not be paying as much in tax as the services being delivered

We’re £330/month for a 4 bed 3 bath! It’s extortionate!

I pay £566 pa for water/wastewater, and that's for a single-person household.

My supply is metered, and I've got really stingy about how much I use. I'm hoping the bill will go down a bit when they read the meter, usually around June/July.

Are they taking it over ten months instead of 12? That’s what my council does.

I’m Band E in the midlands and mine is £303 per month!
Yes mine has gone up OP, but I knew that before they took the DD as I read my bill.

It always surprises me when there’s lots of grumbling about energy and water bills but almost nothing when council tax goes up by quite a lot every year. My council tax bill is 3x higher than my energy bill.

I think it’s because a lot of people don’t have to pay it or get hefty discounts.

Yes there are 2 of us. Our bill for 26/27 is £2271.51.

The aging population have to pay the council tax too. I don't think there is many older people who don't.

Ours is about £170pm (band b) for a flat but what baffles me is that there are lovely 5-bed houses nearby on band A! It doesn’t make sense.

£300+ here now. Slightly astounded when I saw it go over the £300 mark. i don’t live in a mansion.

There are plans to increase discounts up to a hundred percent to several thousand people locally. Must admit, when I saw this, i definitely felt the middle are being squeezed further, as their council taxes go up further, and I’d rather the money be spent on local services, potholes etc, which benefit all.

I pay £160 per month but when I retired ten years ago I paid £98 per month in council tax ( and that is what I budgeted for as I knew my income would not increase).

The £160 is for a bungalow that is smaller in size than most retirement flats (500sqm) but it is detached in a costly area so I can only assume that is why it is £160

Please note the £160 is after I haven taken off the single and disability discounts.

i cannot downsize further as retirement apartments are bigger - though I suspect they fall within a lower band as they are flats.

A good plan would be to pay more tax and receive more in return, similar to countries like Norway.

Invest in things like social housing.

The chances of anyone voting for a party offering that are pretty much nil.

Probably for social care but you carry on fantasising

The problem is lower & middle earners would need to pay more (higher earners already in line) but our distorted housing market makes that very difficult.

And yes no one will vote for that