Manchester Council are profiteering at 200% Council Tax charge

Is the purpose of council tax not to tax you for the services that are provided? Bin collection, library/leisure facilities?
If this is the case then the council tax should be halved rather than doubled?
A charge could in some ways be justified (speed landlords up in getting homes back to market) but not council tax!

This will hit students and other short-term tenants hard, as their property is often occupied for 9 or 10 months of the year.

Reply to the comment left by Christopher Rattew at 01/02/2023 - 10:41
Beware, Buckinghamshire Council rules !!
Buckinghamshire Council apply long term empty penalties to a house not the owner.
So, if you buy an empty house you can incur up to four times the normal council tax.
They also don’t allow the new owner to apply for a 50% discount on council tax for major structural repairs etc if the property has already been the subject of a long term unoccupancy premium.
So, someone might buy a dilapidated house at auction thinking it’s a bargain and find they owe the council between double and quadruple the normal council tax and they will also have a massive repair bill for the house.
In our case that’s exactly what happened, and we are now subject to double the council tax (£6000 PA) that houses in the village worth millions are paying.
The rules are very deceptive, and the new owner is not informed.
This council have no intent to get empty properties back to the market. Their only intent is to fund the huge salaries that their executives get paid. The salary of the chief executive is £220k plus expenses. That triple what MP’s get paid and 1.5 times what the prime minister gets paid. The rest of the committee are on around £170k per year. That’s double what MP’s get paid.
The roads in the local area are disintegrating.
I believe the Conservatives have recently made laws that allow these highly paid executives in councils to force through these draconian penalties.
This behaviour is counterproductive and keeping houses off the market.
Can anyone comment on this and the legality of it.

Councils, Legality , those two words don't go together anymore ....
Cooncils and highway robbers more like .

Hi Jim
My local authority is part of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority that Manchester City Council is part of. Things have gradually been working towards this. Before April 2022 there were discounts for empty property but now they basically charge full council tax on everything. Full council tax is payable on “Empty, unfurnished and uninhabitable due to renovation” and ”Empty and furnished properties” and” empty and unfurnished properties” full council tax for two years and doubling after two years and trebling after 5 years and quadrupling after 10 years.
I wasn’t aware of this potential new development and I take a bit of interest in this sort of thing. It has not been publicised very well. I followed the link you gave and registered my objections pointing out that any extra costs incurred by landlords will be factored into rent and that if it goes ahead some sort of grace period should be allowed to allow a property to be spruced up and re-let. Of course the proposals will affect people other than landlords but the overall number of people actually affected will be small. This will be pushed through, as the Council tend to take the view that if 3% of the population object the “silent majority” of 97% who didn’t object (or never knew) must be in favour! It’s exactly the tack they took with proposals to build on the greenbelt.
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Imagine the following scenario:

Landlord rents their property through a LHA to Manchester Council. At the end of the lease, the landlord wishes to rent again to the LHA but the property has been badly damaged and needs a refurbishment. The landlord will be financially punished for carrying out the improvement works.
where is the incentive to do any improvement works whatsoever to a property?
Get a new tenant in ASAP and deal with any maintenance issues afterwards.

The hiked fees are intended to stop vacant properties being left long-term empty. Most right minded landlords wouldn't want them empty at all.

We have benefited from a one month grace period between lets from various local authorities over the years. The information and application process had to be prized out of them (not published on their websites) but worth the effort.

It seems fair enough to hammer long term empty unoccupied rental properties. It wouldn't affect many legitimate landlords.

I am aware of a close friend being harassed repeatedly by his local council for double council tax on his own home by a vexatious revenue protection officer. It really stressed him out and cost him for legal advice to eventually get them off his back.

Sadly if the LA is empowered they will destroy what little relationship they might have with the GOOD landlords they so desperately need!

How about, renting the vacant property to a Ltd company as corporate accommodation?

The Ltd company then becomes the occupier so at worst you'd be down to standard council tax rates.

First of all, how can you justify charging somebody double council tax. So I rent the property out and the previous tenant trashes the property. It’s takes me 11 months to evict that person through the court system, in which time I’ve had no rent. Then I need a period to refurbish the property to get it back onto the rental market. During which time no tenant is in the property therefore no council tax should be liable. The fact that you brought in council tax from day one it’s already an issue.
If you were to double the cost on “landlords” who do you think the landlords are going to recoup their extra costs from?

This is low resolution and low-level thinking. And a very poor proposal indeed. You would be further increasing the cost to the tenants.

Has anybody not noticed how tenants are paying 30% more than they were a few years ago. This is not solely down to inflation. It’s ever increasing costs imposed on landlords which are ultimately passed on to some of the poor people in society and if they can’t afford it, the council tax payer has to pay it! Minus a percentage for bureaucracy along the way.

This is an idiotic proposal.

The NRLA have now sent out an email to their Manchester landlords with a link to the consultation but they have not yet posted anything on their website, Facebook or Twitter account.
I think it needs maximum publicity.