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.

Ours too. Our local council says it's because of the "rapidly aging population" and social care bill. They sent us all a nice little pie chart to explain how much it all costs

I'll bet you any money the people who don't want to invest in children's care are also the ones complaining about "immigrants".

No one has said otherwise. An ageing population just costs more…

Same

Successive governments have known for years about the changing demographics but have avoided it. A big part is the public don’t want to hear it.

I agree. Lower and middle income earners do need to pay more.

I'd also introduce NI for pensioners over a certain threshold. If I retire at 67 I'll have a combined state/personal pension of around £30,000 and no mortgage.

There's no earthly reason why I shouldn't be required to pay NI on that.

Agree about NI & unpopular but I would pause the triple lock

Just scrap NI & have one tax

NI should definitely be rolled in with general taxation, not just applicable to employees under SPA. Why is it only applied to earnings from employment, landlords etc should have to pay it too.

I absolutely agree all properties should pay council tax. We had a developer buy a neighbouring house with a small extension for a family member and in time a carer. The developer turned this extension into a three story house. This house is council tax band A because he has not sold it. All the others are band E. I have complained to the local authority and local councillors to no avail. I think when properties get planning consent for a substantial change, a date should be put in for a revaluation.

My council tax bill for the year just breached 4 grand 😱. Cookie cutter older new build estate type house. Not a mansion, not a million pound house, nothing like that.

I don’t even want to her the BS about adult social care. My mum lived nearby. She died of cancer 6 weeks ago and all the care was done by me and other family members. Council were useless. Called up saying “please can we not come today”. The CHARITY hospice were the people who actually visited and helped us and then accepted us as an inpatient. So I do begrudge paying massive amounts for “adult social care”.

The council only pick up bins once every 3 weeks. They don’t fix potholes. The tip is booking only and lots of things are chargeable.

as far as I’m concerned, my council tax is legalised robbery. I can’t fathom how such robbing is allowed.

It's always cheaper for local government to provide services in urban areas than in rural ones. I was shocked by how expensive it was when I left a job in a large London borough to work in a county council.

The population of both LAs was broadly similar, but the county needed proportionately more schools, libraries, fire and police stations, leisure centres etc because of the large distances involved. Staff who worked out in the community had to travel significant distances, which was costly and time consuming, so they needed more staff per 1,000 population. Housing staff and EHOs in my district regularly travel 10 miles to do inspections etc, in London that would probably take them into the next borough. And imagine how much further the bin men have to travel!

Out of curiosity, I compared library services in my old London borough to library services in my rural district. The London borough has 10 libraries serving a population of just over 300k; the rural district has 7 libraries serving around 100k.

Sorry for your loss @Rqi you have every right to be fuming 💐❤️

Yes! Similar here. In 2002 I was living in a one-bed in East London and paying 60 pounds a month council tax, after the single-person discount. Those were the days!

We live in a 2 bed bungalow and our council tax is £260 a month .
It's also on the edge of a deprived northern town .

@Rqi Sorry for your loss. We experienced similar in trying to get funding for social care and it was the hospice which was brilliant.

Please do let us know your reputable source for the 25% figure you quote.
Also please do let us know when potholes were quickly (I assume you mean quickly as they do all get filled eventually and it’s the speed with which you have an issue) in modern times with modern levels of traffic and weight of vehicles.

Same here - ours has gone up by 9.5%.

I found a bill from 10 years ago and my council tax was £1395. This year it’s £2,235. It went up £10 a month every year and it never felt bad but seeing the difference now feels steep. Especially when roads have more craters than the moon and bin collections are currently being looked at to move to three weekly instead of bi weekly.

Ours has gone up 7.5% this year. It’s £4411 per annum. Last year I asked to pay it over 12 months (£367 per month), not the 10 months they usually do to make it easier to stomach.

Ours is about £350 now. Seems extortionate. We are in a 5 bed terrace.

Here in Scotland, water costs are included on our council tax bills. We pay for the supply of water but not for dealing with waste water as we have a septic tank. With the regular council tax part, our bill for the next year is just under £1900.

Services in Scotland are terrible so we begrudge every penny just now.

Yes, they take up a quarter of the bill, but of course the councils never mention them. It's always to fault of children and adults who need social care.

I pay about 280 for a 3 bed bungalow in kent

A rubbish collection only every three weeks?? At that point, you'll just have to take your rubbish to the tip! I also think bi-weekly is insane. In my area it's once a week.

True about the parking, but I bet you get public transport that is poor to non-existent in many rural areas!

Even in my medium sized town, public transport is pisspoor other than in the town centre. We only have a half-hourly bus service and only between 9.15 am and 5.45pm, Mon-Sat. If you have a hospital appointment, it's either 3 buses or 2 buses and a train each way, and impossible to get there before 10am if you're lucky. I had to have a biopsy taken under local anaesthetic recently and felt too rough afterwards to get buses back. The taxi cost me £42.