You may have heard some surprising things about the VOA and council tax banding. Here are the facts...

There have been a number of recent stories in the media about council tax banding.
Read on for the truth behind the headlines.

400,000 in the wrong council tax band? 

This story is without foundation. The claim that 400,000 households have paid too much council tax is taken from the 1.85% of properties in Wales that had a banding alteration following the revaluation there in 2005. It appears that this has been applied to the 22 million properties in England to create a story. Applying the same percentage to council tax bands in England is plain wrong. There has been no revaluation since 1993 and any taxpayer who appealed against their banding had their case dealt with at the time.

The VOA will always review any banding when there is a good reason to do so. Since April last year the number of alterations to existing bandings, both up and down, has amounted to no more than a fraction of one percent of the 22 million homes in England.

Revaluation of council tax bands

We find that some people are confused about revaluation – is it happening or is it not? Sometimes our day-to-day work is mistaken for revaluation. Since the introduction of council tax in 1993 we have kept the council tax lists up to date by allocating bandings to new homes relative to their value in 1991 and making adjustments to existing bandings where necessary.

The revaluation for England has been postponed. The postponement was announced in September 2005 and we have no information on when the next revaluation will take place.

Did the Government fail to act on incorrectly banded homes?

Allegations of some earlier “cover up” of properties that were in too high a band are wholly untrue – in fact the exact opposite has happened. In preparation for the postponed 2007 revaluation in England, the VOA became aware of a number of homes that had been improved and then sold, which might have triggered a potential band increase for a small number. This would have meant payments backdated to the date the property was purchased. Far from covering up this issue the Government changed the law to protect taxpayers from backdated bills when properties were improved and sold.

So the truth is that in the small minority of cases where a band needed to be reviewed, the VOA has taken action and the Government has protected taxpayers from backdating.

Please be aware that making improvements to your home does not automatically mean a higher council tax band.

Were the original bandings done correctly?  

It’s a myth that bandings were done solely on the basis of merely driving past the property – so called “second-gear valuations”. Agents who were contracted to undertake some of this work back in 1991/2, by placing each home into one of eight bands, were given details about the properties such as age, size, type, number of rooms and garages etc. They also had information from actual sales prices around 1991, the date of valuation for all council tax bandings in England. The work was quality assured by the VOA.

Could noise levels from a motorway affect a banding?  

The VOA is challenging a High Court judgment that simply concerns the right of appeal against a council tax band on the grounds that increased traffic is a change in the "physical state" of a locality and therefore counts as one of the limited circumstances when a formal challenge against a banding can be made.

If it is decided that increased traffic is a change of "physical state" then it is unlikely that large-scale reductions in bandings will be warranted: council tax bands cover a range of values, so a decrease in property value does not automatically mean a lower band.