Council tax band challenge

[Rojo019]

Hi has anyone challenge a council tax band and if so what was the outcome and is there any advice?

We challenged ours as we discovered we were paying more than our NDNs for exactly the same property.

NDN had their band increased Denied all knowledge - just confirmed it was what we had always paid.

After we moved in the council increased our council tax band. Appealed, lost. New next door neighbour moved in to identical house save that theirs had been extended. Their council tax band did not increase even after a couple of years

I eventually got hold of a copy of the conveyancing deeds to their house that has been registered with the land registry. That included a conveyance within six months of the date the council tax bands were set. That proved it should be in the lower band.

I sent it to the council who kept telling me the two properties were not comparable. In the end I sent a photo of both houses proving that they were identical, save that neighbours had been extended. They then came out and visited and reduced my council tax band and refunded the additional tax I had paid.

Yes, I did and won. My council tax was reduced by one band and I received a refund of overpaid council tax dating back about 6 years.

My NDN then challenged theirs, and they also won. They dropped two bands and received a refund dating back to when council tax was introduced!

i noticed my neighbours property was at a different band than mine (same size house), I challenged it. Took 6 months but was successful AND it was backdated for the 7 yrs I lived in the property, so I got a lovely sum. However I had to request the money be paid to me as they just left the credit in my ctax account.

in their madness the la sent me a new annual bill for all those years so I got 7 letters on the same day for different years (such a waste of my ctax!)

@CoffeeInTheClouds what information did you provide as part of the appeal?

It was fairly easy for us. The house I bought had originally had a leger plot which included a barn, which we didn't purchase. So, I just pointed out that the property was smaller than it had been when initially banded.

That wasn't true of next door though. They were able to demonstrate that other similar local properties were in lower bands.

Yes and lost. It was a new build and so unfairly banded compared to properties build prior to the valuations in 1991. They were supposed to be revalued every 10 years but it's never happened. The only time bands change are if someone extends and then sells, the new owner gets to pay the increased band if the council deem renovations great enough to re band.

I did.

I was able to provide valuations of neighbouring houses from the time the banding was introduced, and that all our houses had the same layout and number of rooms. Was put down by a band.

Anyone who buys a house that has been extended by their vendor needs to know that CT band does not increase for any extension a current owner does but can be increased, if appropriate, for the new owners.

Interesting post. My NDN asked a few weeks ago which band we are in as she’s in a 3 bedroom semi and in band F. Our house has been extended to a 4 bedroom semi (not attached to hers) and we’re an E.

She wasn’t too pleased but did say that she won’t do anything about it in case the council decide to put ours up! I really hope she sticks to her word.

I checked other nearby properties and it seems like they have randomly been allocated between bands E and F

I just did this, got lowered a band and 14 years of back payments😁

I started by checking on the Gov website what band the other houses were in on my street and for some reason they were all A but a few including mine were B and the houses are all exactly the same. I filled the online form in with as much info as I could find out and the valuations, etc and that the houses were identical. We were successful but our neighbour who also appealed was not and is left in a Band B. Makes no sense

@Muchtoomuchtodo Well, if she does she's more generous than I would be! How much extra is she paying??

@ScarboroughHair her band is about £400 a year more than ours. She gets a single person discount but I don’t know how much that is.

We fell foul of this. Went from C to an E due to previous owners extension. Neighbour next door (who also extended) still paying a C despite them being twice the size of household.

The banding system seems bonkers! It makes very little sense.

A previous poster makes a good point that bandings are only increased when the house is sold on. The VOA website also shows previous bandings, so it is worth doing your homework to weigh up the risk.

I imagine our NDN benefitted from our house being reduced just before they challenged theirs, and they used ours as a comparable.

They are definitely bonkers. We live in a row of 4 houses... 3 are 3 beds, 1 is a 2 bed. One 3 bed and the 2 bed are Band A, one is Band B, one is Band C.
The one in Band A has the biggest garden...

We are the only B on a street full of A's, but we should be a C. Keeping my head down about it!

I appealed and was successful. I was the only B on a street of identical terraced houses. I rang someone at the council and they had my house down as being 3 bedrooms but it was in fact two. They put it down to a typo! I got my band reduced. I didn’t pay council tax for the rest of the year and I had a nice cheque too!

We got moved up a band approx 3 years after moving in due to previous owners extension which was a bit of a shock.
Tried to challenge it unsuccessfully.

My neighbour appealed and lost….ours was increased 🤬

Yup. New build. I suspected the banding was too high. I did a freedom of information request and only X number of 1 bed properties in my post code fell within the band (which was the highest of any band) and guess what, there were X 1 bed properties in the new build block. This gave me pretty good grounds to argue that the properties were wrongly banded. So the valuation office people backtracked when I challenged on this basis, and applied the correct band. But only for me. I had to involve my MP to get them to reduce the banding of the other 1 bed flat owners, which was absolutely ridiculous (but ultimately successful). About 100 flats in total, from memory. I enjoyed that win, probably my most significant legal victory to date.

I did, and won.
We have a 3 bed house at the end of a street of very similar looking 4 beds. I realised that we were all categorised the same, but this was wrong for our house.

The process was straightforward, and about 3 weeks later I received confirmation that I had been wrongly banded. The council provided a refund straight away.

I lived in a street with 150+ identical houses.

When I realised we were able to challenge band I looked at everyone’s band. One house was band C and the rest of us band D. Ours wasn’t decreased and the band C was increased….

I must do this, I'm a c neighbours a, some of my house and garden now is in neighbours(family owned both houses, so could divide the garden house how they liked) . I'm a 2 bed semi most 2 beds are a b except a house behind me, think the valuation office thought it was one unit, it looks like one unit. If only they challenge I would be in for a good shout. If I don't go down a band the neighbours will go up , ok not very neighbourly 😬.

@cptartapp do you know why it increases on the sale only? I believe it was because in rates days if you improved your property the charge went up immediately which meant people decided not to extend or improve their houses or those of their tenants. I used to work in council tax.

@Rojo019 just research before you do it. In a street of identical houses it is fairly easy to band (when they rushed in council tax following the poll tax) whereas if you have an eclectic mix of properties or a row that all seems to be 3 bedroomed houses but instead has some 2 bedroomed houses in there then banding can be wrongly applied.

Best starting point is the VOA (Valuation Office Agency) who actually band the properties, the council produce the bill. Have a look at your street on the VOA's website here https://www.gov.uk/council-tax-bands there will be markers to indictate if a change will be looked into. Look at neighbouring streets too. Try to find houses the same as yours, google maps makes this relatively easy these days with both satellite and street view so you can see plots are roughly the same size too.

On a new build estate we used to band a 3 bed detached as a D band, 3 bed semi as a C, 2 bed semi or row house as a B, 4 bed an E, "executive" 4 bed usually double garaged and a 5 bed as an F. Everything is worked off a D band, ie a C is a percentage drop on the D band etc. This does not apply to bungalows, they are usually a one band increase on what you think. It has been 20 years since I did that job but this stood where I worked as a rough guide.

Council tax is a hereditament so is a combination of the land it sits on 50% and 2 adult occupiers the other 50% hence the 25% discount for sole adult. So if a house comes with a lot of land it will probably have a higher band than you think because it isn't just the house on it.

And good luck, I hope you do get a band reduction, because it can go either way, ie your's is correct and everyone else gets increased so if I were you I wouldn't tell anyone you were doing it