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I'm delighted to be doing this update to the Council Tax podcast I recorded a couple of weeks ago at the beginning of June, because there's good news.

Now, the mainstay of the podcast that you're going to listen to is all about the usual stuff I do, how to save money.

Check and challenge your

council tax band, hundreds of thousands of people are potentially in the wrong band,

are you entitled to discounts and reductions, and could your council owe you money? Some people

get backdated payouts of thousands of pounds. But at the start of the pod, I talked about a

potential government consultation on the

administration of council tax and my hopes for what would be in it. Well, it came out today,

and most of my hopes have come to fruition. So I thought I'd add this introduction telling you

what's happening for two reasons. One one because i thought you might be interested

but two the government wants people's views on council tax too you can feed into this consultation

so i would urge you to do so if any of these issues ring a bell to you i'll of course be doing my own

submission alongside my team. But it's important

that they hear from the general public, not a member of the general public, you know the point,

that they hear from the general public too if you've been affected by these issues. So I want to

talk you through what's going on. For me, parts of the council tax system are broken. And I've called

for some of these fixes for nearly 20 years. So it is a delight that the

government has listened and rapidly launched this consultation, which includes many of the areas

I've been talking to them about. And I can now tell you, it was a few weeks before all of that

podcast that I met with Angela Rainer and put these points to her, and I do believe that she did listen.

So the first one on the biggest and the most important for me.

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