The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) bands every home in England and Wales for Council Tax. Your property’s band is used by your local council to determine how much Council Tax you pay.
Your Council Tax band is based on the open market value of your property at a fixed point in time. In England, this is 1 April 1991 and in Wales, this is 1 April 2003.
Council Tax bands cover a range of property values, so homes of different values may have the same Council Tax band. This means that an increase in your property’s value won’t necessarily mean that your band will go up.
There are times when a property may be moved into a higher Council Tax band. In this blog, we’ll look at the four main reasons it could happen.
Council Tax band challenges
One of the reasons a Council Tax band may go up is due to someone challenging their band.
When you submit a challenge, we review all relevant evidence, such as sales data, property details and the bands of other similar properties.
If the evidence shows that the value is higher than we originally thought due to the characteristics of the property and its location, your property may be moved into a higher band.
As a consequence of a neighbour's challenge
If a Council Tax band changes as a result of a challenge, we may review the bands of nearby properties. By law it’s our job to maintain an accurate Council Tax list, so we must do this to check other bands are correct. This means that if your neighbour’s property has similar characteristics to yours and their band goes up, yours could to.
After major renovation
A property may be deleted from the Council Tax list if it can’t be lived in, typically due to it undergoing major renovation, or because is in disrepair or derelict. Read our deletions blog to find out more.
Once the relevant works have been completed and the property can be lived in again, we will reassess the band. During our reassessment we will consider all the changes that have been made.
If the property’s value has increased because of the work, this can lead to the property’s Council Tax band increasing too. It can also increase if the renovation or repairs mean your property is now similar to nearby properties in a higher band.
Following improvements
The VOA follows strict laws around bandings for Council Tax.
For example, legally, we cannot change the Council Tax band of a property in the Council Tax list that has been improved until it is sold, or there is a general revaluation of all domestic properties. This helps to make sure homeowners are not penalised for improving or maintaining their home.
Instead, we give the property what’s known as an improvement indicator, this prompts us to review the band a property is in once it has been sold.
This means that if you have recently bought an improved or renovated property, we may change the Council Tax band.
When we review the band, we consider all of the changes that have been made. If we increase the band following our review, the new band will again apply from the date we notify your local council.
Read our improvement indicators blog to learn more about the process.
Backdated bills
Although there are some situations set out in legislation where we would backdate a change to the Council Tax list, this won’t happen if we are increasing the band.
If we increase your band the change only takes effect when we notify your local council, so you won’t receive a backdated bill
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