Council Tax

[itsallyellow]

Could anyone explain why I pay more council tax now that I live in a rented 1 bedroom apartment of set of blocks that contains 90 apartments and we all pay to have our waste & recyclables collected by Biffa rather than a couple months ago when I lived 5mins away in 4 bedroomes terrace house with the council doing a p**s poor job of collecting the rubbish ( if this amenity is one of many contributed toward by council tax)

[Miss Zippy]

Council tax is based on property value, not property size. Could your one bed flat be a swanky all mod cons designer pad in a desirable location, making it more expensive that a four bed terrace in a less desirable location? Or perhaps you might be confusing your service charge with the Council Tax? Most leasehold properties are subject to a service charge (likely to be between �50 to �100 per month for an 'average' flat), which pays towards the maintenance of communal areas of the flats and things like gardening and window cleaning etc.

[WendyS]

Log onto ItsNotFair.co.uk and join the national Council Tax protest so we can all get a fairer system of paying local taxes.

[lady_p_gold]

It is only about 1% of the Council tax that goes towards collecting the refuse. I walked past a row of houses today and they all had their recycling boxes out and they were full of bottles and cardboard and plastic bags etc. and most of them had something in that you are not supposed to put in, not that I am answering your question really, but just to put the other side of the coin. The problems in collecting refuse are just amazing, blocked access and so on and so forth and whereas it might not have been so in your case, half the time is taken up by clearing illegal flytipping and abandoned vehicles and it is just sucking up the resources. There must be a reason why your management company or developer has chosen to use an outside contractor. As the previous post have said it is all to do with the property value, and not the size.

[hartley]

If you have moved from one local authority to another this may influence how much council tax you pay and also the whether it is the Council proper or a sub-contractor who collects your waste.

Waste and recycling collections are often the most visible service that council's provide and should anything go wrong with it many people feel that the masses of cash we hand over to our council's is wasted. I personally think that waste collection is one of the better value services I get (and my collectors can be fairly poor at times as well). All your rubbish picked up and disposed of, some of it recycled, every week at the same time, dedicated phoneline if there's a problem? Not bad for 1% of my council tax.

Just out of interest, do you pay Biffa independantly to collect your waste or do you just pay your Council Tax normally and Biffa turn up to collect it?