Jealous of those who live in A-D?

[MrsMurphyIWish]

I’ve started seeing comments about budget money funnelled into “welfare areas”. DH and I are nearly 50. We were raised in an under privileged area - he, working class and me foster care. We never moved and as teachers of nearly 30 years I think we may not be net contributors but we work bloody hard.

Here’s to all at the council area workers where we bloody work our arses off - I’ll take any benefit that comes our way!

It’s £100. We’re giving ours to the local food bank.

I’m not sure that quite tracks though. We paid £295k for our band E house, it’s now worth about £350k. In a town close to me, there are band D houses for sale for £650k. I couldn’t afford to buy one of them!

I'm not talking about houses that have increased in value because of extensions though, I'm talking about houses that have naturally increased in value due to desirability.

Where I live there are a few council estates where all of the houses were considered to be Band B. There are areas with rows of 2 bedroom terraced houses that were put in Band B, and more central 3 bedroom terraced houses that were also included in Band B. The 1930s semis were put into Band C.

My friend has a Band B three bedroom terraced house on a desirable road that is worth around £420k. Across the road are boxy detached houses that were built in the late 1990s. These are in Band E, and they are only worth £50k more. (There is a Band D house in my borough that has recently sold for £767k, which shows how way out it all is).

If somebody living in one of the Band E house thinks, "Well this is a chuffing joke! They get help and we don't and their houses are selling for not much less than ours, we should be in Band C!" So they query it and give evidence of the houses across the way selling for not that much less than theirs. The council /VOA may (doubt it) lower the Band E houses to D, but are they really going to keep my friend's house in Band B, when those houses are selling for double what other Band B and C (and possibly some Ds) houses are selling for up the road?

Edited for a typo, probably missed a few more.

Exactly. And I think what infuriates me is that Andy Burnham acknowledged what a flawed system council tax is and said he would look at it yet here we are with his government gifting money using that exact system.

But as has been pointed out many times on this thread, that's not how council bands work. There's so many discrepancies as to how they're calculated (particularly for properties built after 1991) that it's farcical.

You'll get £600k properties that are band C and £300k properties at band E.

Just realised that I’ll get it and I’ve just spent thousands on a heat pump

Yep. My next door neighbour is E and I’m D.

My take on it - If this is the best way they could think of to target help to those most in need of it, we are all in big trouble.
I’m paying £440 per month in council tax (band G) if I was paying £100 or £200 then I wouldn’t be having as much bother with my energy bills. What we pay in CT bears no relation to my/our income, our mortgage is less than many people pay to rent a one bed flat these days.

Agree. There is error layered upon error with the banding. I think many people on here are too young to remember how the bands were
determined in the first Instance. This was done in haste to replace the poll tax. It was done in an age pre-internet searches and the ability to do swift look ups. Pairs of evaluators drove round without stopping (second gear assessment) and graded the house. So big frontage shallow depth - high. Short frontage, big length - low. that’s how crude it was. It is very hard to have sufficient weight of evidence to get a change. I managed for a relative where they were the smallest house on the street with the highest council tax band, for myself it’s not clear cut enough.

add to this home improvements, which may or may not be tracked, and gentrification and it’s a mess. I’ve always said that if the council truly believes that my house is worth what the council tax band suggests, maybe they would like to make me a commensurate offer as I’d bite their hand off.

We bought our house (in a large village in the south-east) in 2018 for £310k. It's a 20-year-old terraced townhouse with limited scope for increasing value so only worth about £325k now. We're band E.

Just had a quick look on Rightmove and one of the highest value properties currently for sale in the village is a detached farmhouse bungalow. Fewer bedrooms, but around the same square footage. (Though if you include the land/outdoor space it is much larger). It's up for £750k. Band D!

Make it make sense!

Same as us. Meanwhile my daughter and partner both earn six figure salaries, but are in a band C.
Its a bit bizarre, but I don’t begrudge them as they are paying a huge amount out in tax and student loans!

The banding makes little sense. Houses in the town I live in are over £500k and in band C.

Not jealous in the slightest, but seems an utterly bizarre way of doing it.

I don’t begrudge them either, the ones who put the most in tend to get the least out at every possible turn!
My concern is that the government in their wisdom have caused more division between people by choosing the crudest and most nonsensical possible measure for deciding who deserves this particular “breathing space” rather than helping the entire economy by removing the boot from everyone’s necks and cutting certain taxes rather than piddling about at the expense edges and giving my tax money to people who earn multiples of what I do! It’s madness.

this

This is a bit odd to me, there are 700k flats that fall into band D

I think many people on here are too young to remember how the bands were
determined in the first Instance

I don’t think you need to be old to realise it’s a mess. My in-laws in an expensive large home in Wandsworth have always paid less than us proportionally.

Don't people on benefits already get extra help?

Oh well you will get £100 back at least

Having investigated this £750k property further, although it only has 'two bedrooms', it has two separate outbuildings, one of which has been converted into an office and another is a two-roomed workshop. It is set in three acres of land with paddocks! It is band D! 🤣

(We have a piddly courtyard garden)

We have neighbours that are both consultants - in a house that falls into this A-D bracket! £100! I'll put it towards a night out.

We're definitely banded wrong - or a least inconsistently. The other half of the semi detached is a band E and it's pretty identical. The other neighbour is also an E and has two fewer bedrooms. I assume at some point it'll be spotted but it didn't change when we moved in which we thought it would.

What is your solution then ?

Bearing in mind as well as targeting the poorest houses it has to be :

i) Quickly implemented.

ii) Low cost of implementation.

iii) Easily reversed with no political consequence as the price of gas may plummet at some random point in the future.

I agree that council tax needs a review, but my guess is by far the majority of houses are banded correctly or at most out by a band or so.

Those banded over would surely be corrected by the owners on appeal after 30 odd years of council tax.

I think it's good for it to be spread out, people working hard should get something back it's only fair.

I don't understand what you are arguing for, you don't begrudge people earning highly the £100 but you do begrudge people who are earning highly presumably if it's multiples of what you earn? I think this is quite a contrary stance.