Martin Lewis explains easy way people can ‘check and challenge’ their council tax band

Martin Lewis explains easy way people can check and challenge their council tax bandSource: Good Morning Britain, ITV

Transcript

00:00What can people do about council tax?

00:02Well, you can absolutely. I've got some graphics over there.

00:04I'm going to show you how you do the check and challenge over here.

00:07So, look, there are two checks everybody should do

00:10on their council tax band.

00:11Now, these are my way of devising it,

00:14so it's not an official system, but this is for safety.

00:17The first thing is the neighbours check.

00:19So you find a similar or preferably identical property

00:22in your street and you check your council tax band compared to theirs.

00:26Don't worry, you don't have to get in touch with the neighbours.

00:28You can see all council tax bands, gov.uk for England

00:32and saa.gov.uk for Scotland.

00:34Check your council tax band, check your neighbour's council tax band.

00:37If you are in a higher band than an identical property,

00:41that's your first tick, the neighbours tick.

00:43Now, you should always do the second check,

00:46which is one I came up with back in 2007.

00:48Still the most watched TV show I've ever done,

00:50just over six million viewers.

00:52What you have to do is you have to work out

00:55what your property was worth in 1991.

00:57Now, if you've bought it since then, you can back-convert

01:00the price when you bought it to 1991 prices.

01:03If you've not, find a similar property and back-convert that.

01:06If this sounds difficult, don't worry.

01:08There are free tools online for check and challenge,

01:10which will do it for you.

01:11Now, the reason I say do both,

01:13if you are in a higher band than neighbours,

01:16there is a chance all your neighbours are in too low a band.

01:19And if you ask the list to be checked, their band will be put up,

01:22which would not make you very popular.

01:24You want your band to go down,

01:26which is why the valuation check, while it's not evidential,

01:30at least says if you pass both,

01:32it's likely it's you who is in too high a band.

01:35And you can go and look this up online.