Council tax

ann that is horrendous that any money would go towards H's fees to which you are contributing at present.

What about a lodger or would that extra money be removed? You cannot win.

I didn't know that about Wirral - that's where I've moved to!
I did laugh at my first communication from them - they said they had no valuation officer available so if I would like to calculate what my new build granny annexe would have been valued at in 1991, I could make payments on account, until they could send a valuation officer. ?
I didn't.

Our Council tax bands range from £1,250 to £3,500 last financial year. Ours is somewhere in the middle. We have good local services paid for out of this such as planning, transport, highways, police, fire, libraries, leisure and recreation, rubbish collection and disposal, environmental health and trading standards.

How each £ of your Council Tax is spent

Charleygirl15

My general rubbish and the disposal of effluent are paid for indirectly via my mooring fees through the boatyard where I am moored. If I paid Council Tax I would be paying for these twice.

Even if I paid Council Tax they would not allow me a green bin because I live on a commercial site. All businesses (corner shops, takeaways etc) have to arrange their own recycling.

I'm not too happy about the company the boatyard uses for this; I'm fairly sure it goes to landfill so I save my recycling in my car boot and take it to the collection point every two weeks.

I find this a bit of a bind because of a long standing back problem.

For the same reason I rarely walk on pavements and, especially at my age, not after dark. Anyway, how much wear can one little grey haired old lady cause to the slabs.

I pay road fund tax.

I am not having a go at you. I think this helps to illustrate how lacking in nuance our taxation systems are.

Whether we could devise systems that would satisfy everyone I'm not sure.

I’ve just looked my LA council tax / where your money goes and there seems to be a fair bit missing from that list Anja . On top of that list we also have....

The police
The crime commissioner
The fire and rescue services
Integrated transport authorities &
Transport levy
Housing
Public health
Environmental services
Environmental agency
And quite a few more too.

I get that the money has to be stretched a long way but most of us are not seeing wage rises to cover these never ending CT rises .

Despite our CT going up we've still got lots of cuts and service reductions. A lot of good council employees have been made redundant and dodgy private companies employed instead as a 'cost cutting' so called improvement.

boat I've been very interested in your posts as have considered living on a boat in the past mysefl. I'm curious how you physically manage e.g. getting rid of effluent given your back problems? That part put me off. Where I live that's a condition of a residential mooring.

humptydumpty

I've sent you a pm.

Yes, it’s not a comprehensive list gilly that’s why I said ‘such as’. The Councils have a lot to finance and this Government isn’t making it easy for them.

Jane makes a good point. I’m glad to see that some LA eg Liverpool are taking some services back in-house.

my present house is 8 years old, I am widowed and get a small council tax discount. My only personal benefit is my bin emptying once a fortnight. I pay far more than wealthy family groups with several people working, living in older houses with land, all in the same village. Council tax is going up 3%. Poll tax would be much fairer. All older housing should be re-assessed on current market value

That is one of my gripes too craftyone . We were told that our house had been rebanded (it is 7 years old) . We pay £hundreds of pounds more a year than older houses in the town worth almost twice what mine is worth. How can that be fair? I hold with the “piss*ng on your grass won’t make mine any greener” theory but I really don’t think it’s is fair that we had to be rebanded to reflect real prices when others have not been.

What have you done about this gillybob?

There is nothing we can do Anja my immediate neighbours and I all queried the banding when we moved in and we’re told that we (as with all new builds) were being rebanded a year ahead of the older properties . The rebranding was then abandoned /stopped and we were stuck. There are houses a stones throw away from me twice the size of mine and worth a hell of a lot more, paying hundreds of pounds less in CT . How can that be fair?

I suppose you could raise it again with your local Councillor but then that wouldn’t reduce your bill and would just increase for the others if they acted on it.

Exactly Anja just as I said earlier . It might just spite others and probably wouldn’t help me at all .

Basing a household's council tax on the value of a property seems to me to be a ridiculous system.
I can see the argument that those with large, valuable properties are likely (I know there will always be exceptions!)) to be wealthy and therefore able to pay more, and at least have the choice to downsize if they really want to reduce their CT bill.

However, things become much less obvious in the lower bands, and the 'choices' more limited or non-existent.

Just as an example, look at social housing.
Nowadays, you have to be both very poor (and very lucky) to get this, and if you do get it, you have little or no choice in the market value of the property you are allocated. Yet these properties are band rated in the same way as any other properties, and however poor the household, they have to find the money regardless (or a percentage of it if on certain benefits).
It seems crazy to me that people in these circumstances could find themselves having to pay, for example, a band C council tax bill!

I would be in favour of a local progressive tax based on income, applied to all adults living in an area - a local version of income tax.
HMRC already collect all the data that would be needed, so surely it would not be too difficult to put such a system in place?
To me, it seems a much fairer and more logical way of raising these taxes.
How the councils then spend them is another matter, of course!

Just had my new payment plan. We’re band F and will be paying £253/month. Up 4% overall .
Police funding has gone up by10.4% but no increase in adult social care. IMO this should have gone up too.
I’m still working part time so we can continue to live here for another few years. I work from my converted garage so need the space.
When I give up we’ll enjoy our home completely for a couple of years then move somewhere smaller and nearer town with a lower CT rate.
I don’t think we get anymore for our money than a couple living in a smaller property so it’s up to us if we want to move and get the same services for less.
I do realise that some people don’t have that option.
I don’t know which system would be fairer but there are many factors involved e.g. we live in a village and have to travel to access amenities, I think we have about 6 street lights for example.