Should students pay council tax?
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2020
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Four students studying at Durham University received a surprise bill for Council Tax. They were billed hundreds of pounds for a period when no-one was living in the property over the summer. After Money Box got in touch, the council looked again at it and concluded that the request for payment was made in error. The charge has now been cancelled. It also reviewed their council tax records for 2019/20 and found no other cases of students being asked to pay. We speak to the editor of the Council Tax Handbook.
Police forces across the UK have seen a recent spike in cases of what is called courier fraud. Criminals persuade older people to take cash out of the bank and then give it to a courier to keep it safe. What can potential victims do to avoid being scammed?
Earlier this year we looked at the history of financial mistakes. We asked listeners to get in touch with their biggest financial mistakes. A number of people told us theirs was buying a flat with Grenfell-style cladding and then being billed tens of thousands of pounds for its removal. We hear from people in this position.
Presenter: Paul Lewis Producer: Alex Lewis Editor: Emma Rippon
Transcript
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| 0:40.0 | Hello, thieves stole seven million pounds from vulnerable, mainly old people last year |
| 0:45.8 | by pretending to be police officers who would keep their money safe, and the leaseholders who |
| 0:50.8 | faced bankruptcy to replace flammable cladding on their flats. But first, |
| 0:56.0 | four university students were told they had to pay council tax, even though students are exempt |
| 1:01.0 | from it. Their local authority, Durham County Council, sent them a bill for £381. It accepted |
| 1:07.8 | they were students and didn't have to pay the tax, but said that rule only applied when they were actually living in the property. |
| 1:14.9 | It said they still had to pay for the three months from July when they rented the house, but to the end of September when their course began. |
| 1:23.0 | Charlotte is a student at Durham University and one of the four who was sent that bill. |
| 1:27.3 | We were just a bit confused being students. we hadn't really heard much about council tax |
| 1:30.5 | before. Then when we researched it and asked our friends, they were like, we don't have |
| 1:34.3 | to pay council tax. So we then phoned them. We thought immediately that the case would just be |
| 1:39.3 | resolved, but we find out later that that wasn't going to be the case. They then said that we had to pay the tax for the period before we moved in |
| 1:45.7 | as the exemption for students didn't apply if the property was unoccupied. |
| 1:49.7 | Also with me is Stephen Charlotte's dad. |
| 1:52.7 | And Stephen, you've been helping Charlotte with this. |
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