A delighted dad has explained how he won back £910 in council tax by challenging his banding after picking up the tip from Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis.
Ryan, 34, who lives in Manchester, had been paying too much council tax for over four years. His property was classed as Band B but after he challenged this, it was moved down to Band A - meaning he was entitled to a rebate.
Ryan told The Mirror that he used to pay roughly £1,400 a year for his council tax. While waiting for the decision on his council tax challenge, he moved house with his partner and son, Bowie, 2 - but estimates his bill would've gone down to around £1,200 had he stayed in the property. Ryan was still entitled to the money back on the years he had overpaid in his privately rented property.
READ MORE:
"The first thing I saw about challenging your council tax was from Martin Lewis," said Ryan. He went through the steps of how to do it. I initially didn't do it because I thought it was going to be stressful, but it was actually really easy.
"I saw next door was an A band and it was a slightly bigger property in terms of the land, garden and that. I thought I might as well go for it. A couple of houses down the street had similar facilities to ours and were an A band as well."
It is estimated that thousands of homes could also be paying too much council tax. Figures by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) show around a third of challenges between April 2020 and March 2021 were successful.
But you need to do your research first. If you challenge your council tax and it turns out you're in too low of a band, you risk being pushed up into a higher band.
This could also result in your neighbour's bills going up as well, if it turns out your whole street is in the wrong band. The checks you need to make are below.
"You need to do research about house prices and the Government website will show you the council tax bands for your postcode," said Ryan, who put in his claim in February and received the money in August.
"I told a couple of people on the street about it, who I thought might also be owed money too. They did a claim and got back £3,500. They didn't go through the Government website though, which is free to use.
"They went through a claims company, which took a chunk of their reward. They would have got about £7,000 otherwise." Ryan was able to keep 100% of his council tax rebate by following these steps:
If you think you're in the wrong council tax, you could be owed thousands of pounds back - plus you'll pay lower bills going forward. The first step check is to see what council tax band your neighbours are on.
You can check council bands online for free, so you don't need to ask your neighbours if you're not on friendly terms - just make sure you try and compare homes of similar sizes and value.
Use the Gov.uk website to do this for houses in England, or the Scottish Assessors Association for properties in Scotland. However, keep in mind that it could still just be that your entire street is in the wrong banding.
READ NEXT:
