I live in a small 2-bed flat, which is in Council Tax band B. It was only after living here a few years that I learned how many properties across the country were potentially misbanded. Recently, my landlord sent me a 2022 valuation for my property, which put it at £110k. Nationwide's House Price Index estimated that the value in 1991 would have been £26.5k, way below the £40k threshold that would put the property into Band B rather than Band A. That has made me motivated to challenge the council tax band, as I may have paid a couple of thousand too much in the time I've lived here.
I sent this evidence to the VOA, who replied that they are unable to accept this evidence, as "A house price index is not an accurate indicator of value for a specific property and is of very little help in arriving at a Council Tax band". Fair enough, I understand that this is only a rough estimation. Instead, they wanted one of the following forms of evidence:
Evidence of 5 identical, or very similar properties to mine, in my locality (within 1/4 mile of your property, this can be extended to ten miles for rural areas) which are in a lower band: I used the gov website to check the council tax bands of other 2-bed flats nearby, but unfortunately found that most of them were in Band B too. However, not too many of these are directly comparable to mine (they tended to be bigger), and I believe that most of the properties in the area are misbanded - more on this later.
Sales evidence in my locality, very close to the valuation date of 1 April 1991 (no more than two years either side of this date), which suggests your property might be incorrectly banded.: Anybody who has been through this process will know that the public data on house sale prices from the Land Registry only goes back to 1995, making it very difficult to find data from 1989-1993. I used the tool to find numerous examples of properties (both comparable properties and larger properties, including houses) that sold for <£40k in 1995 but were now in Band B or higher, and suggested that this was evidence of widespread misbanding in my area, but VOA rejected the evidence and repeated their stock line about the types of evidence which they need to see. I saw suggestions online that some people had success by showing local newspaper sales listings from 1991 of comparable properties, and so I asked VOA if I could provide this instead, but they rejected the idea outright and once again repeated their stock line about the type of evidence they could accept.
So I'm left in the situation where I have good evidence to suggest that my property would have been worth <£40k in 1991 and should therefore be in Band A, but no way to prove it. I can't share evidence of similar properties nearby being in a different band, because I believe that these have been misbanded too. I can't share sales evidence from 1989-1993 because I don't have access to the data, and the alternative of local newspaper sales listings has been denied. My own property wasn't sold in that time, so I can't use that. I'm aware that you can pay Land Registry for sales data during this time, but I have no idea which nearby property sales would have been sold at that time, so wouldn't even know where to start.
Does anybody have any ideas where I could go next with my council tax band challenge? Or do I just have to accept it given that I can't meet their standards for evidence, even though it seems likely I've been overpaying?