Has anyone had their Council Tax bill for 05/06 yet ?  Ours dropped through the letter box this morning - we've got to find an extra £250 this year !

Although the increase is only about 4% on last year, we've been put in a higher band following a review of all properties in Wales.  Apparently a similar exercise is to be done in England in the not too distant future !

I agree with the view that the system should be based on an ability to pay rather than on the price of the house you live in :)

Joyce,

Would be interested to now what the new form of review is.

I have on 2 occasions successfully appealed my council tax band as I built a few house one after the other and they kept putting me in a higher band. The old system was based on the value of a house in 1990 ( I think that is the right year of hand )  anyway they were miles out.


Pamela

Ours has gone up by £5 per month still far too much IMO.  It is the one bill I really begrudge paying.

Michelle

Mines gone up by £25, shocking as there is only me.

Ours is nearly £200 a month here. It really irritates me because for that we get 2 bins emptied once a week. We don't even get the lane into the village (public lane with a fair bit of traffic) gritted. What am I paying £200 a month for!!

Ok I only pay £96 per month with single persons reduction.  But for that I get my bin emptied once a week, AND I used to have to drag it a quarter mile to the link road.  I have no street lighting, nearest lighting is over 2 miles from me. I live down a privately maintained road, 3 miles from anywhere,  council have no right of access.

We have just got back to the amount that we were paying goodness-how-many years ago when the Rates were in :) I can't complain because they got the banding wrong for us - they seem to have given almost every house in the road the same band, despite the houses ranging from hundreds of years old little cottages to quite new detached. When the bandings are reviewed next year we will have a massive hike, as we must be at least two bands under what we should be :) As I say, we can't complain - except that we must have one of the worst councils in the country :D

Daisy

Ditto. The gritters & snowploughs never come down our road and we don't have street lighting, mains drainage or water. We don't even have a bin. We just get plastic bin bags (bought by us) lifted once a week.

Same herer - no mains drainage! So what are we paying for!!

I ask myself that frequently :D Bad roads - takes 1 hour some mornings to do the 2 miles to get onto the M11 and they are soon going to build another 10,000 houses :( We don't use any council services except the ones that you can't avoid - roads, waste, police etc. Stopped using the librairies years ago as they are so depressing :( :(

Daisy

We have one policeman part time in our village. If we ring "the station" it goes through to the duty police station 20 miles away!!

We have the same problem - they don't even know the area when you describe it to them :( We do have a large police statio in the town - but calls don't go there now :(

Daisy

We have a large purpose built cop shop in town. That isnt Manned 24 hours :( It was the fastest growing town in Western Europe 3 years ago.Any prisoners go to Grantham and the only people that are kept there overnight are Asylum Seakers where they have to get the Cops to babysit them in on overtime!!!!!!!!!!!
And when it is manned you still cant get hold of them.
So I dont tend to bother unless it is an emergancy and then I ring 999 like yesterday when there were bricks on holdingham roundabout making traffic swerve. Took ages to get put through to the right department, and think the only reason why it was cleared so quick was cause princess Ann was due in town within the hour!!!!! LMAO
Lea :)

We are paying for council waste our hard earned cash on taking innocent people like myself who just wants to enjoy life with their dogs without being dragged through crown court and be made to feel like a criminal, only to be told after 4 years of stress and upset they have destroyed their evidence!!! (If it ever existed that is!)

In Doncaster we have been told that our council tax WILL NOT increase this year! However!!! this is from the Elected Mayor who is up for re-election in May - the same Mayor whose salary has increased 3-fold in 3 to 4 years!!!! This time next year I am sure that ours will be going up considerably.

These are the bands for the (Welsh) county that I live in.  I don't know if they'll use the same figures when they do the English review but it gives an idea. It must be borne in mind, though, that the 2005 list is based on the property prices as at 2003. I would guess that the number of houses in bands A and B in my area is very small.

Band 1993 List                   2005 List

  
A Under £30,000               Under £44,000
B £30,001 - £39,000        £44,001 - £65,000
C £39,001 - £51,000        £65,001 - £91,000
D £51,001 - £66,000        £91,001 - 123,000
E £66,001 - £90,000        £123,001 - £162,000
F £90,001 - £120,000      £162,001 - £223,000
G £120,001 - £240,000    £223,001 - £324,000
H £240,001 and above      £324,001 - £424,000
I N/A                              £424,001 and above

We are waiting for a years re-bate which will be a nice amount of money! - there are some advantages to being a student after all

Don't really understand why somebody earning more should pay more if that's what they decide in the future. We live in a very modest house, just 2 of us and due to being in the forces my husband is out of the country quite often. Why should we pay more than a large family in a bigger house who are using more facilities and create more waste ?.
val

Wasn't that how the old Poll Tax was designed? ;)

Poll tax - I preferred that system and I paid it every month. Problem was, lots of people didn't !. I know so many people who didn't pay a penny and didn't care. It was just done on the adults in the house wasn't it ?. Seems a more fair option.
val

Hi Val,

I liked Poll Tax too - well, :rolleyes:  strictly speaking OH preferred it ( he pays the bills :D ) - but I do think it was a fairer system over all and I'm sure the current one is getting dangerously expensive to make up for all the money lost when so many people refused to pay the Poll Tax  :(

Teri

So do I Teri think they are trying to get the money back. The debt has been written off I believe now and they are not trying to recover it anymore.

Ooh no, the Poll Tax was diabolically unfair! It took absolutely no notice of ability to pay or the standard of your home. An elderly lady across the way from us, who had only one cold tap in her house, and had to cross the lane to the outside loo (the affluent country, you see) had to pay the same amount as the whizz-kid executive in his big house with swimming pool and all mod cons. Outrageous!

THink the war on the poll tax and when I look back we only paid £25 each , £50 for the household.  I now pay £198 and havent got the new figure in yet.  I was one who did always pay my poll tax.  I find the council tax incredible really.  

I've yet to meet anybody who feels that they get value for money with the Council Tax. Why then, as a country do we put up with it and pay so much ?. Every year they put it up, every year we pay it. I know all services are expensive but at least with the gas, electric etc we know we pay for what we use.

You're right, arched, as regards not getting value for money.  Although I originally thought it would be fairer if the Council Tax was based on the ability to pay, I think I've changed my mind. :)
After all you wouldn't get a shop asking people to pay different amounts for a pint of milk depending on their income, would you ? 

I liked the poll tax too, we were much better off under that system and it was fairer.  I agree also that you should not pay more council tax just because you earn more, if that theory was applied to everything in life like gas, electricity, food etc it would hardly be fair.  Also there would be no point in anyone working hard and aiming to get a higher paid job, or earning more due to years of experience and diligence, if you had to pay more for everything.  I think this government is taking away the incentive to work hard, because those who don't have almost as much reward at the expense of the rest of us.  The council and government should be careful, because it could backfire if we all refuse to pay, just like some people refused to pay the poll tax and have got away with it too.

I used to work in Local Government. It is dreadful, In my experience if you try to do a decent days work you get sent to coventry:(  Also I have yet to work out why we need so many levels: We have parish, district, county, regional (unelected), national and european. By my reconning therea re at least 2 layers that need removing, then we may get some more action and less talking. Some hope.  

but Joyce it's a 'tax'

I hope it doesn't apply to the Enlgand, cos it means I will jump from band E to G, in fact where I live you'd be hard pushed to find a studio flat for less than 160,000. :(

Hi Joyce

You have said that you are paying an extra £250 a year based on a 4% rise ? So what was the amount you paid before and the higher rate you are on now ? If it was the same band and working on the % rise then it means your yearly rate would be £6K plus ?

We pay in Oxon £1200 per year for our band rate of the house value of approx £108K which was the price bought as new 5 years ago. The hosue after lots of work ie a loft conversion and normal rise is value is now £250K after 5 yrs . I do begrudge paying it and we do get regular threats to take us to court. They have the cheek to refuse to take black bin liners for health and saftey reasons and also have openly questioned why I use disposable nappies My response was somewhat curt and to the point on that one :D

I must get in touch with my mum as she is in Powys so will be interested to see what has happened to her bills !

Lucy
xx

Well, I think this is when we shall be leaving Madness Manor in the next year or so - we've just had the forms to fill in from Land Registry/Council Tax valuation, asking about the house - last time we were revalued, we had just taken the plaster off the walls, bare earth under the subfloor, kitchen was an old belfast sink, hot water was a lethal ancient immersion tank in the kitchen, windows barely had frames, let alone windows - we retained valuation as farm labourers cottage

Although at times it is still a tip, it has been improved.......... Council tax is enough as it is, but we did know that sooner or later, we'd have a whopping increase :(

Margot

I know Margot but you have added value to the area you are living in but at the same time you have to pay for it :(

Rural living and town living so diverse and the services you get vs charges are so wrong. We end up paying shed loads for so much less. :rolleyes:

There is a dereclict farmhouse/outbuildings we have had our eye on for a few years now and just if we ever got a bit of capital that we could seriously start then we would definately go for it !

It quite isolated and need a shed load of work but wow it is actually our dream home :D I know of the farmer and know if we had the dosh then I could approach him and the rest would be history :D

The only Council benefit we enjoy are the dustmen!!!   They come down every week, and are very good.

Our Council tax is already high enough (over £160 per month) so heavens only knows what it will go up to - and this is the year I'd planned to retire :(

I had always advocated local income tax as being fair, but as someone at work said, when we are at work all day and every day, we can't enjoy the "benefits" that are available!!

Margot

I hear what you say, we already pay over £200 per month for street lighting and rubish collection, when we are revalued I think we will fall off the top of the scale what with the staggering increases in house prices and the extension. That will probably be enough to push us in to our escape from the south east to some remote hill side, although if house prices carry on as they have been in the west country we may end up having to move to Ireland to get what we want!

Wow!  I thought our's was bad enough but in comparison to some of your's I think we are quite lucky..........Bristol area, Band B.......for 05/06 our bill is £1008.21  - £101.00 per month!  Still bad enough when there is only one wage coming in and 6 people living in our house, 4 children under 16

To add insult to injusry. The council tax that was paid locally was sent up north, as announced by a local councilor.

my council tax has gone up about 15 quid a month and i just dont see its worth it. i live where daisy lives and our council is busy shutting the place where kids have swimming lessons and trampolining lessons it is a couple of family centres and i think it is disgusting they are shutting them. the bin men leave a mess if they turn up the roads situation is shocking and driving through the town can be a nightmare i never see a police man and my kids dont even go to school here!!!! its just like putting a load of money in the bin every month!!

My council tax bill arrived via a neighbour, they had put it in her envelope as well as her own, did suggest she might like to pay it as well

Did you know in France , I you live in the Paris area you pay £250 per YEAR!!!! Anywhere else in France and its £150 per YEAR.

So what do we get extra that they dont?????------------ NOTHING!!!

Might be worth mentioning when we get the canvassers round!!!

I don't much like paying my Council Tax either :)  But I am surprised that so many of you don't think you use very many of the services Council Tax pays for.  Throughout our lives we all benefit from varying local authority services depending on our circumstances at the time.  Education is paid for by C.T (and we were all kids once), Social Work (a service not only concerned with families who can't cope or are neglectful of children, it also provides home helps, residentail homes etc for older people), Economic Development (works to attract incoming investment to the area which goes towards increasing the standard of living), Housing (not only concerned with with public sector housing, but with private sector grants etc), Arts & Heritage (museums, local authority owned theatres etc), Leisure (libraries, parks, cemetaries, crematoria etc), Planning & Transportation (roads, traffic light systems etc), Finance (collecting revenue to keep all the services running!), Waste Management (refuse collection, street sweeping etc) and last but not least the Police and the Fire Brigade :)

To be honest, I don't know what system would be fairer, but I don't believe its the Poll Tax.  But C.T is currently like income tax with it all going into the pot to pay for everything. I don't think it would be practical to just pay for what you use; think of the financial burden at the time you had, for example, three children at school :)  Likewise, not many people rail so much about paying income tax, but many people rarely use the Health Service, whilst others use it all the time, just as with the Council Tax many are paying towards services they barely use :)

Not getting at anyone at all, just thought I might put another point of view :)

Lesley

PS Forgot to say that here in Scotland it also pays for our water and sewarage and we ALL benefit from that :D

Hi Lucy
Last year our bill for the year was about £880.  This year has seen a 4% rise AND a jump into the next band. So we'll be paying over £1100.

Before the community charge (poll tax) we had the old rates system.  Maybe if the Government had gone back to the same system with the same title, people might have accepted it easier.  The words 'council' and 'tax' may not have been the best choice. :)

We pay nearly £2000 per year council tax, £15,000 per year income tax, and that is without all the other charges like NI, road tax, VAT, etc and there are only 2 adults and one child in our household. 

LF - all those things you have listed, are they funded solely from council tax, does central government not put some of our income tax towards those as well?  When you see the benefits people get who won't work (we personally know some) because they are better off on benefits, I am afraid it takes away the incentive for people to work and it is just not fair. 

Hi CSmad,

Local Authorities do get funding from central government too - I guess it's just their way of not terrifying us with even more horrendous Council Tax Bills!  I also agree with the fact we all pay an awful lot of other taxes too and if we actually all stopped and added them up we'd be shocked to the core by just how heavily we are taxed in total! 

There are also people who rely on benefits because they perceive that they are better off not working.  However, in most cases this isn't actually true; they will either be no worse off or slightly better off. The problem is the mind set that doesn't appreciate that it can be extremely fulfilling to work and contribute to society, preferring instead to do nothing work wise.  I do see this attitude sometimes in the work that I do and it is so disheartening to me and my colleagues when we know that the people really could work and choose not to :(
The benefits system is superb for people who find themselves struck by misfortune, but a recalcitrant minority can seem to make a mockery of the whole system. 

I'm also feeling horribly cynical today and have come to the conclusion that many politicians don't really care and only do what they think will gain them popularity when they should be putting their efforts into creating as fair and just a society as possible.  How they would do that I'm not entirely sure, but they're the ones that are getting paid to do it, so I wish they would :D

Lesley

Lesley

I think Politics is a load of pants really and it is what wins votes rather than what is the best policy at the moment :(

Lucy
xx

Well had a reply back from my mum and they didn't change the banding even though they have had a big extension done which is quite amazing ! :)

Also what has amazed us even more is our bill which came through today ! :D

We have had ours reduced by £4 a year :D :D

Perhaps it may have something to do with our very good Conservative run Council ;)

Lucy
xx

Where do you live Lucy, I am moving to your area!!!!!!
Mines gone up by about £10 a month!!!!! :( :( :(
Lea :)

Oxfordshire :D

Ours has only gone up by £5 per month - which is amazing as it is only a few years ago that we had the highest council tax in the country (other than metropolitan boroughs) :) It could also be to do with the fact that we lost our labour council a few years ago (although the current, hung, council isn't too good :( ) :)

Daisy