council tax banding a question

[Linnet]

At the moment my granny's council tax is band B but the market value of the house is worth more than this banding. If she was to buy her house, at discount, would her council tax be moved up the the higher band that reflects the true market value of the house or would it stay the same at band B as that is the category the discounted price falls into?

anyone know? someone told me once that when you buy your house, i.e the house you're living in, you are automatically reviewed for council tax, but I'm not sure if that's true or not.

As far as I know, they work out the council tax band of your propery by looking at what the market value was in 1990 (or similar year) so all the houses on her street will be in the same band.

Have a look at \link{http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1160141972,18232,}
Linnet - please check out the link, (hope it works this time), it is a full explanation in moneysaving expert, with a link to check she is in the same band as her neighbours.

Re your second paragraph - a property is only reviewed for council tax if the previous owner extended/improve the house while you live they lived it, but they will not pay any extra - it is not implemented until the house is sold to a new owner, the council will then put it up a band. Hope this makes sense!!

yes, it doesnt go on CURRENT market value at all, it goes on prices in the 90s.

So the council tax would stay within the same banding then as the house hasn't been improved/extended in anyway.

thanks everyone

thanks for that link Helenn it was really interesting. Granny's whole street is on the same band. I had a sneaky look at my dads band as well while I was there and discovered that he doesn't pay very much more council tax per month than me, which is amazing as his house is huge compared to mine.

thanks again

Pleased to help Linnet. Just one more thing, I'm sure your granny knows that she gets a 25% discount off the usual council tax if she is living in the property on her own, (or if she was a single parent with children living with her for that matter). Just checking!!!

Can I just say, in response to Helenn's post, that when one of our neighbours moved, the people in the next road realised our terrace's council tax was 2 bands lower than theirs for allegedly identical houses and complained to the valuation office. Despite the fact that their houses have double drives, bigger (and south facing) gardens than ours and we have falts opposite, the 5 houses in our road were put up a band. We had no right of appeal and had to pay the increase immediately.

tallulah - I am sorry, you seem to be right. I am only going by what I have read on moneysavingexpert, but Martin Lewis was encouraging people to check they were not in a council tax band higher than they should be by comparing on the Valuation Office web-site. I clearly remember him saying to appeal, but not to worry because they couldn't put you up a band if they realised you were in too low a band, and that it would only go up when the property was sold. I have now looked through the message boards and found a post detailing a situation such as yours, where someone appealed as they were in a higher band than their neigbour, and it was found that the original person was in fact in the correct band but that the neighbour was in fact too low so theirs was put up. Sorry to confuse you but it does seem to be different than when I first read about it.