Has anyone been down this route ? I seem to be in a higher tax band than most of the street and my house is the same. Is it worth appealing to get it swapped ? Has anyone successfully challenged it?

Yes.
You should be able to find template and guidance on MoneySavingExpert website.

We were refused. Our house is half the size of neighbours, one band higher…

Edit: due to successive extensions on all nearby properties.

As above, yes it’s absolutely worth appealing, when the bands were dished out they did a pretty poor job of it, and many houses were misclasified but do a bit of research first as to what qualifies each band…

It could be you’re paying correctly and the rest of the street are paying too little, which won’t make you a popular neighbour!

We were refused.

I don’t believe it’s based purely on size of house, if I recall it’s based on a few things that you’d need to familiarise yourself with. Possibly number of rooms and stuff like that but I ain’t doing your homework for you.

We are in the process of appealing our band. Dropping a band would save us £500 a year. It seems the Scottish assessors are painfully slow though.

@matty –
next door is twice+ floor area, twice garden, double garage vs no garage, 5 bed vs 3 bed – and same band.
Down street is same actual house design and size, on slightly smaller plot but with garage. One band lower.

Technically it has to be done within 6 months of you moving in.

My house is pretty much same as the neighbouring property but a band higher for no reason I can see. Didn’t find out until years later. Computer says no now. Though it does sort of say you can still challenge it if you like, but seems to suggest they may just ignore you.

https://www.gov.uk/council-tax-appeals

We appealed the banding in our last house. A ‘valid appeal’ can only be made in the first 6 months after you become liable. We’d been there a couple of years before finding out all of our neighbours were a band lower, because they immediately appealed when Council Tax was introduced. At that time our house had been part of a business, so when we reverted it to residential it was put into its original band.

We were told we had an ‘invalid appeal’ and asked to justify why we hadn’t appealed within the prescribed time – my main argument was that it was unreasonable to expect us to know what property values in Kendal had been over a decade earlier, particularly as we weren’t living anywhere near Kendal at the date values were assessed. I also suggested that as the other houses in our terrace had all been re-banded, ours should have been.

Remarkably, our appeal was allowed, and we got refunds for the overpaid years, as well as the ongoing reduction.

Back then, there was no charge for the appeal (I have no idea now), so there was nothing to lose.

yes.

I (*Englandshire) believe you can challenge within 6 months of purchase or if there is a material change (in our neighbours case houses being built behind etc).

I used right move and built up a spreadsheet of ‘similarish or relevant’ properties – size sq ft, rooms structure, asking price or sold price and date relevant, address, postcode, existing council band

In my case our house was price only 10k more expensive than some houses 2 bands below etc etc. I won (and so did 3 of my neighbours who I referred the info to)

Firstly complain to council, politely with accurate well researched and provable facts, then recomplain, then recompalain then request to go to ombudsman/tribunual (which will cost you a day of holiday) and present your facts and they will give a binding decision. (court after that so unviable to you but not the council)

*there is a downside I believe(suggest you check), as if you fail it might mean other properties gets reassessed, so may impact neighbours banding in a non downwards direction …………..

Yes, worth a punt. I tried for my old flat and succeeded. Was very painless – it was a flat in a block of flats which were all one band lower – mine was the same size but they thought it had two bedrooms for some reason. Sent a letter with evidence and had a phone call with a helpful guy from the council.

They then tried to give me a refund for 10k! I turned it down as I’d only just purchased it so figured that was probably fraud!

Yes we did it, neighbours houses (bigger) were in a lower tax band, and a friend with the exact same house in a different village were a lower band.
Took forever to sort out, but think we got a refund of approx £4k (9 years worth), so its worth doing.

There was a thread about this a couple of months back. Some useful info there?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/council-tax-band-reclassification

If you are still considering it Contact the Valuation Office directly rather than going through any companies because they may have an initial charge and if your successful with your appeal they may take a percentage of any back pay.

Bare in mind that your current council tax band was calculated using data from 1993. The chances are that your property will be worth more now than it was back then and its been known to happen that they increase your band.

If you sucessfully get your band decreased you will get a nice back payment too as they take it back to 1993.