Need to register my renting flat

[nask70]

Hi I have been renting a studio flat for the past 12 years to private tenants mainly students, however I recently got a tenant who is working but wants to register for council tax. The flat is not registered with the local LA is there a way or department I have to contact to register the flat. Thank you

[nukecad]

If its just a flat and not a HMO then there should be no need to register the flat. (unless you are in Scotland or your particular council has special rules?).

If it's not an HMO then the tenant is liable for the CT and should just contact the council to pay.
They will be happy to take his money without Iinvolving you, unless hes claiming benefit.

Students are exempt from CT but should still have been registered to claim the exemption.
If they weren't then you may be liable to pay for the years that have been missed.
TBH though someone must have been regustered as paying/exempt or they would be chasing you by now.

[wfd_property]

Check to see what band this address is https://www.gov.uk/council-tax-bands

[ash72]

There are 2 organisations you need to speak with: if the property has never had any council tax banding applied, you need to contact the voa.gov.uk you would need to supply them with a plan of your flat so they can assess which band the property applies to. Once this is done they will contact the local council and tell them about the banding, you then need to contact your local council - council tax department to register yourself or your tenants details.

Students are except from council tax, but I would have assumed the council would have written to the property address. You can contact the council tax dept, supply the address and see whats on the account. The other flats in the development you can check online to see what banding they are if they of similar layout/size to yours as a comparison.

[ss002d6252]

There's going to be a large backdated charge to come out of this - the VOA are very unlikely not to go back the full 12 years in the banding. Once it's banded the council will chase the owner for the charge and it will then be up to the owner to prove that they are not liable for the council tax charge.

Full time students are disregarded for council tax purposes. If all of the occupier of a property are students the property will be exempt from council tax under a Class N exemption.

I've dealt with many similar cases, including a lot of cases where the owner has been unable to prove the occupancy and has ended up having to pay the charge themselves - roughly a minimum of £1,000 for each (obviously higher if not a band A)- it's one of the big problems with not keeping the records up to date.

It's not unusual for a flat in a development to have slipped through the initial banding of a development and only come to light years later. The initial problem is often because the developer doesn't pass on all the information to the VOA and the VOA then miss the property or the flat is created after the main development and not reported retrospectively.