will you admit the council snoops to your house

[mummylin2495]

regarding the story in the paper today will you be happy to admit the men from the council to inspect your house and see how you have improved it ,only to be taxed a higher rate ?We have a conservatory in our home ,which we have had built on our land and paid for with our money,they say if the bring in the scheme and we dont let them in we will be fined .They are intending to slap charges on to anyone with a patio,greenhouse etc.

is the writer of the OP a Mail headline writer by any chance?

lol RTH!

I said about the interior decoration just for the reason that if you have a estate agent looking at two identic properties, same size, same number of rooms, the one with the worst decoration or even the smelly pile of clothes in a corner will be valued for several thousand less, and unfortunately, when the houses are sold, those prices reflecting decor/cleanliness are the ones to establish the band on which a house ends up.

Obviously this is only a problem when the price of the houses is placed just in the border between two bands.

There's a guy in the paper today whos lives in Belfast, he's been sent his estimated bill for next yr and it has gone from approx. £1.5 k to over £4k.

I'm no Tory voter notr do I read the Mail, but this man (a pensioner) is being treated unfairly. And he's not scaremongering, he already has his estimated bill.

If they do bring this in there is no way anyone is going to let it happen.
Why should people be penalised for trying to better themselves?
Does the government want everyone to live in shitholes with uncut/uncarred for gardens, old broken down cars in the front garden and the back garden full of broken kids toys?
People will try and avoid tax rises at any cost, this is potentially going to be worse than the Poll tax riots.
If no one improves their property then builders, double glazing firms, garden centers will lose a lot of business and the whole country will look like a dump.
The sooner this Labour government gets out the better. I hated the Tories but they were never as evil as Tony Blairs shambles of a government.
That's my two pennies worth!
Adele.

another Labour tax heading our way

Not really a Labour fan

Haven't read whole thread, but wanted to voice my opinion!
Have heard this story before about re valuing homes regarding council tax. I don't understand why it has to be on the value of your home (espaecially these days when property values are sooo unrealistic anyway, lets be honest here). Shouldn't we pay council tax that is equivalent to the exact facilities we recieve in our area?

I live in a small 2 bed new build house with no garden and a driveway. I have street lighting, bin emptied weekly, recyling bin emptied every 2 weeks. My council tax is £105 a month.
I used to live in a huge 3 bed maisonette with a caretaker on tap, bins emptied etc, lots more lighting and street lighting in the middle of a City Centre. Here the council tax was £83 a month. Surely the 3 bed property should have been more council tax?

My friend has just moved into the country into a 3 bed house with huge garden and driveway with garage, she pays the same council tax as me (£105) but she has no street lighting and bins only emptied fortnightly.

Haven't read whole thread, but in short - no, they can phuck off.

Pooka, I think there's a huge difference between me choosing to allow a plumber into my house because I want the work done and have chosen the firm and the government ordering me to open the door to any Tom, Dick or Harry they send round. That's why I mentioned CRB checks - I have a young son and see no reason why I be forced to allow unvetted strangers access to his home. Ds might think this person wasn't a 'stranger' for instance, but someone who had been invited into the home, who mummy 'knows'. There will be thousands of these people so some of them are bound to be bad 'uns, just like any other job.

Don't understand why it is necessary either - planning apps and aerial photos should provide enough information. Even if you've added an extension under permitted development, either it will show up in an aerial photo or the building regs people will have a record.

There is also the fact that this tax is in no way related to ability to pay. We bought our house in 1998 and it has now doubled in value, but dh's salary has remained the same once you allow for the increase in taxes we pay. In our village there is a terrace of 1960's houses owned by people who generally are low earners, farm workers mostly, plus the school caretaker. when we moved here one sold for £65k. They don't change hands often but last year one sold for £165k. None of their salaries will have increased by anything like that. Dh and I have worked out we would probably need to sell our car to pay for the first year, but after that goodness knows where we will find the money from.

torantothehills no i do not write headlines for the mail,merely a mum who is concernd that this tax will go ahead,i just read it in the paper same as everybody else ,but two people have kindly put a link on here for you to read.im not inventing this story honest!

This really worries me.We saved for 10 years to move back to a village & could only afford the worst house I have ever seen.We are struggling to afford to renovate it,as it needs completely gutting.But,we have good views,low crime & live in a conservation area & have good schools.

If the council tax goes up much more,all my wages will be needed to cover it.Plus the only facilities we have are 2 streetlights & the bins emptied.

I wish I could believe that people will fight & not stand for it,but this government seems to ride roughshod over the general population without a thought.

more in the mail today

If you live in a nice area you will have higher council tax !!

Not sure I completely understand this, so maybe someone can correct me:

I've heard that they're going to revalue everywhere, which you could argue is overdue, given that the last valuations were in 1997. So of course, most houses will be worth much more than in 1997, BUT, as it's based on bands, surely they will also have to redo the bands to take the increases into account. Now I know the bands are national, but the council tax is local, so surely your house will only really be compared with others in your area? So you'll lose out if your house is worth proportionally more, compared with others nearby, but not just because it's worth more than the national average.

I'm sure that many councils will take the opportunity to put bills up across the board, but I think (and hope!) there's also a certain amount of Daily Mail scaremongering in these articles claiming that everyone in the South East will be paying 4 times as much because their houses are worth so much more.

I wonder how many taxes they can increase and create before a significant number of country's wealthy people leave.

I hope this is just a bunch of hype and not going to become a reality.

But as always it will be the people who earn just a litle bit too much for any benefits / tax credits etc but still have to watch the pennies and dont have the money for luxuries and any increase in household bills does take its toll, especailly when one partner has given up work in order to look after the children.

it may be scraremongering on behalf of the Mail but there is no smoke without fire

The wealthy classes may leave but its the ones stuck in the middle that lose out .

Perhaps they ought to tie the raises to the amount our incomes have increased since 1997, and adjust it down for increases in cost of living.

Totally agree with you mummydear, even when both parents remain in full time employment.

My point is if they raise taxes so much that the welthy (the source of most of their income) leave then they will have cut off their nose despite their face.

despite = to spite

Didn't both Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Paul Daniels promise to leave should Labour ever get elected? Think the ugly runts are still here.