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.

"Those public sector salaries" are a tiny part of what council tax has to pay for. You referred to not wanting to hear about what it's paying for - but those things are an astonishing and rapidly rising cost. The services people expect cost a LOT.

I've just had a look to see what our banding is, and what our neighbours bandings are. Our house is band F. We have 5 bedrooms. Both neighbours either side are also F. But one of those is a 3 bed, and one is a 4 bed. I then looked up FIL's house which is a 6 bed HUGE mansion.... also band F.

WTF?

Band E, Surrey.

Mine is £100 per month. That's on an A band with a 25% discount & over 52 weeks not 10 months which is about 44 weeks.
It's too much for what we get

I live in a cheaper area of my town in SE - I pay £141 including single person discount

OHHHH

Just looked up a friends house, which is a 6 bed, 6 bath detached house with large gardens....it's band E. So they pay less than us, even though their house is twice the size. WHAT????

If you don't pay attention to your outgoings - you say yourself you ignored this bill - you can hardly blame anyone else.

It's allowed because it isn't robbing.

Part of the problem is that people don't see a direct benefit to themselves and therefore assume that nobody is benefitting. So you saw your mum not receiving care and therefore assume that nobody does. In reality, a small number of people with extremely high and costly need do. Increasingly the neediest cost more, so those receiving care become fewer in number overall because the money covers fewer, more expensive people.

Things that everyone sees, like grass verges, potholes being fixed etc, get cut in favour of things that very few people see and directly benefit from. Whether this is right or wrong is another debate, but it's true.

What isn't true is that your bin gets collected every three weeks. You mean your general waste bin. Same as mine. With other bins collected weekly for recyclable items. In the old days the general waste bin got collected weekly. Now it's changed but the service is no worse for it.

I get the discount and single person one

My MIL is on pension credit, and even she has to pay 20% of her council tax. The council used to give 100% reduction for people on pension credit, but they don't any more, it's been cut to 80%.

Mine is over £400 too…

I sthink people would be more accepting, if there was some clarity about how council tax payments are arrived at, in different areas and how the banding system actually works. There seem to be so many anomalies in n £00the way these things re calculated and why there is so much variation across the country.

We moved eighteen months ago, downsizing. Council tax then was less than £200 a month for a three bed house. Less than two years later, it’s £244 a month and the increase this year was in excess of 5%. We are rapidly getting to the point where we cannot cope with more increases.

I reported a massive pothole the week before last.

I reported it on Monday morning, got a text on Tuesday afternoon saying they'd inspected it and it was a priority repair. When I went out on Thursday, it had not only been fixed, but they'd resurfaced about 30' of road, the full width of the northbound side.

When they fix potholes on our local roads, the repairs only seem to last a few weeks before they start to break up again, but this was a main road and looks as it's been done to a much higher standard.

The issue is also how unfair the council tax reduction schemes are across the country, now there is no longer a nationwide CT support scheme. All councils are free to make up their own rules for who pays what.

Therefore, in some areas, people on purely UC/PIP income pay nothing, whereas those earning the equivalent wage pay full whack. In other areas, those on UC/PIP pay just as much as those with wages.

I am a debt advisor based over 3/4 council areas, and the above is a frequent scenario. It's ridiculous that this was allowed to happen.

I thought the council tax rise was capped around 5%. How can it possibly have jumped that much?

I know a northern European country that charges x% of the house value to the owner, and a fixed amount per occupier. I think double tariffs on second homes. It works well there.

Certain (bankrupt or nearly) councils were allowed to increase up to 10%. Mine is 9.5%.

It depends where. Not all London councils are the same. Although a friend mine pays a tiny amount in central london but where she is I imagine the social care costs are lower.

I'm in a nice market town in the NE, our house is band F, and just checked, our bill this year is £3,600. So double what you pay each month, but actually our council is pretty average with what it charges so you must be in one of the lowest charging councils in the country.

Ranked Council Charges

I’m in a 3 bed Band E tatty old semi-detached and mine is £232 after the 25% single person discount. I pay it over 10 months so no direct debit in Feb and March, when I get my car service and MoT, and a delivery of heating oil.

They still pay taxes.

My area is one of just a couple in the whole country who have started to class PIP as income. It has badly affected a lot of disabled people. So if you live within this particular city boundary your PIP is counted as income and if you live a street away in the county it isn't.

That’s pretty shit, but even 10% doesn’t make it jump from the £150 that OP was expecting, to £232

Yep. Disgraceful.

Not Scottish - but I did live in the Highlands for a while and was rewatching Still Game when I need a user name 😄

Thank you though! You can appeal in England as well and I did try it but the council were having none of it.

Glad you got yours sorted though. Well done!