Financial guru Martin Lewis has issued some important council tax advice. Making sure you are in the correct band could help to save you hundreds of pounds as the cost of living crisis continues.
The Money Saving Expert founder was on ITV's This Morning on Tuesday (March 28) when a viewer called in to thank him for his previous advice. They told the show they had checked their council tax band and found they had a different one to their neighbours, reports the Echo.
The viewer challenged this and they are now waiting for a £4,000 refund - since they were overpaying for the last 30 years. Martin said: "There are up to 400,000 people in England and Scotland in the wrong band.
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"The value of our council tax band was done in 1991." He explained that back then someone drove past houses and decided which bands properties would fall in to.
The money expert said: "That was meant to be a stop gap until they did it properly but they've never done it properly. So 32 years later people are still on those bands."
Martin urged people to check their bands as they could be owed money, just like the This Morning viewer. His Money Saving Expert website detailed how to check.
How to check you're in the correct council tax band
By far the most important step is to find out if your band is higher than neighbours in similar or identical properties. You could simply ask them, but there's no need as it's public information. In England, you can use Gov.uk to find out.
If neighbours in similar properties are in a lower band than you, then you may have a claim. A second crucial step is to estimate what your home was worth in 1991, as that's when and how the council tax bands were defined. You can do that with the Money Saving Expert calculator here.
If it turns out you are in the wrong band then you can challenge it. But Martin warned that challenging your band is not something to do speculatively without the checks.
He said: "You can't just ask for your band to be lowered – only for a 'reassessment', which means it could be moved up or down. It's even possible that your neighbours' band could be increased, although this is rare.
"This is why it is crucially important you do both of the checks, and to be especially careful if you've added an extension or something that increases your property's value. In terms of you being eligible for a reduction, by far the most important check is the Neighbours Check, yet the secondary Valuation Check is useful for seeing whether your band is too high or your neighbours' band is too low."
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