A five minute check helped me get a £2,000 refund – it was so easy to do and lowered our bills forever
A five minute check helped me get a £2,000 refund – it was so easy to do and lowered our bills forever
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LOGGING on to the government website to check our council tax band, I quickly realised we were paying £2,256 per year while our neighbours were paying £336 less. Our home was listed as a Band E, while the houses either side - and also both three bed semi-detached properties were Band D.
![[Woman sitting on steps outside a house.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emma-Robertson-3-1.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
I then looked at the houses nearby that were classed as band E and noticed that they were all the houses that were extended and had also added another bedroom. And that meant we had been overpaying since we bought the property in December 2018. It was really straight forward to do.
![[Headshot of Emma Robertson.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emma-Robertson-1.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Once you’ve input your own postcode, the website lists all the addresses around you and what band they’re in. I submitted a challenge online and it took five minutes to fill out and three months later I received a letter explaining I was due a £2,000 refund.
We are not alone, one in 20 homes in the UK or 400,000 people are in a too high council tax band. It’s also important to note that your band could go up as a result of the challenge - or your neighbours property could be changed. Firstly, you need to check your neighbours banding, which can be done through the Government website.
And secondly, doing a valuation check of what your house would’ve been in 1991. It was in 1991 that the new council tax system was launched and there wasn’t enough time to do the task accurately. Meaning that mistakes were made. As a result of that over 3 million people have now challenged their banding and are still waiting for their refunds to go through.
