Appealing a Council Tax Band in Barnet
A client of ours, who also happens to be a surveyor, and his wife acquired a very nice house in Barnet in February 2007.
After he had bought the property he received a notification from Barnet Council that the Council Tax band had been reviewed from E to H, leading to a much higher rate of Council Tax being payable.
The background to this storey was that the previous owner had bought the property at auction in 1991. Between 1993 and 2007 the previous owner carried out considerable improvements including:
- converting the former stable block to residential accommodation
- constructing a two storey extension to link the former stable block with the main house and
- constructing a large conservatory
- acquiring additional land and constructing a double garage and driveway
- renovation generally
According to the present law on Council Tax, improvements and extensions such as these are not taken into account until the property has been sold. In other words the new Council Tax Band applies only to the new owner.
The new owner, our client, was concerned that the property had been placed in Band H incorrectly by the assessing surveyor from London Borough of Barnet and called us in to provide an opinion.
As the relevant date for Council Tax Banding is 1st April 1991, the next step after inspecting the property was to find any evidence we could about property sales and the state of the market at that time. There are a few residential estate agents in Barnet which have been active since that time and we are grateful for their help in providing details of properties they sold. Having been active ourselves in 1991 (Gilmartin Ley was founded in 1979) providing valuations, typically for banks and building societies, of properties nearby, we were able to trawl our archives to extract any valuation reports which might contain relevant market commentary and / or evidence.
Having assembled and analysed the evidence we concluded that the property should be in a lower Band than Band H.
Negotiations ensued with the District Valuer but unfortunately an agreement could not be reached and the matter proceeded to be determined by the North West London Valuation Tribunal. For this we had to prepare an expert witness report and attend the Tribunal, including being cross-examined.
The Tribunal determined that the property should fall within Band G and we had a satisfied client.