Martin Lewis council tax: Money expert urges households to check council tax band as 400,000 could be owed refund worth thousands

Martin Lewis revealed around 400,000 Brits could potentially be due a refund worth thousands as they are paying too much council tax. His comments came during last night’s episode (Tuesday 16 January) of his show “Bill Buster Special” which was aired on ITV.

In this episode, Martin shared ways you could save money across your council tax, water, mobile and broadband, highlighting that thousands were paying too much for council tax and explained how they could get this "big bill" cheaper. He told viewers he had been campaigning on his issue for the last 17 years and explained how it all comes back to the initial valuation of homes in the UK, back in 1991. 

He said: "This is the key, in 1991 the bands were valuated, and this was meant to be short term fix. It was called secondary valuations and people were driving around in their car, someone sitting next to them and looking out the window at houses going, 'band D, looking at how many rooms, 'band B' that was how our council tax system was valued and it has not been done again since in England and Scotland. This is why so many people may well be in the wrong band around 400,000 estimated."

He then shared with viewers the steps needed to take in order to check if you are paying too much council tax. The first step to take, he said, is to check what your neighbours are paying by going to the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) in England or the Scottish Assessors Association (SAA) in Scotland.

He explained: "The first check is the neighbours check. Is your band higher than your neighbours for a similar home? It should be as identical as possible close to you, so the same number of bedrooms, that type of stuff is similar."

If you discover you are paying more than your neighbours, you move onto step two which is working out how much your house was worth in 1991. Martin added: "So what you do you want to go and find again, an identical or similar house or maybe your house that was sold in the last five or six years so you know roughly what its price is and then you want to convert it into 1991 prices. This sounds difficult but there are free check and challenge tools online that will do this for you so don't worry too much."

If you are in the wrong council tax band then you can put the case forward to your council tax and have your band changed. However, Martin warned that your council tax can go up as well as down. 

He said: "Only do this if you pass both checks, the fact that you're in a higher band than your neighbours is maybe because they are rolling to the lower band. So if you don't do the valuation check, your band may not be lowered, but you may get all their bands increased, which does not make you popular."

During last night’s episode Martin showed the success story of couple Patrick and Heather who live in Norfolk. They managed to get their council tax band changed which gave them a refund of £1,700. Following this they then managed to get the entire street's band dropped, giving all their neighbours cheaper council tax bills as well as refunds.