Pod Insights The Martin Lewis Podcast Council Tax Cost Cutting Special: 5 ways to try to cut your bill & possibly get £1,000s back About this episode Martin Lewis dives into council tax. Are you overpaying? Martin breaks down practical, often overlooked ways you could cut your bill—potentially saving hundreds each year. From checking your property band to claiming discounts for single occupancy, students, or disabilities.
We also explore what to do if you think your property has been incorrectly assessed—plus the potential risks of challenging your banding. With real-life success stories and clear step-by-step guidance, you’ll find out how to navigate the system and make sure you're not paying more than you need to.
Plus, this week’s “Tell Us”— We’re asking: What’s the biggest money secret you’ve ever kept? When was it? Who did you keep it from—and why? We hear your candid, surprising, and sometimes emotional stories.
In our regular Mastermind feature, Adrian tackles a question from Martin on Lifetime ISAs (LISAs).
And Martin brings you the latest Premium Bonds update—including current prize rates, odds of winning, and whether they still stack up compared to savings accounts in today’s climate.
If you want to ask Martin a question, you now can! His Question Time podcast lets you ask Martin absolutely anything and everything (within reason!) – so if you’ve always wanted to know his favourite ice cream flavour, if he’s ever pondered the meaning of life, or have a very complicated question about your personal finances, email it to [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
Transcript 12,859 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:45 Martin Lewis? They came up with the council tax. And when two middle-aged men get together, there's only one thing they talk about first. This is a substantial amount of money we're talking about for many people who are in the wrong band. Did that go on air? Premium bonds hugely popular, in my view hugely overrated. Hello, I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's going to be about. And this is our big topic episode where each week we lead on one main subject to help you save. Usually, most of it comes from my BBC Radio 5 Live show with Adrian Charles. But don't worry, there's also bonus money-saving tips and tricks and extra just for you lucky, lucky podcast listeners.
2:49 Speaker 03 So what have you got for us today, Martin?
2:51 Martin Lewis? Well, the big topic of the day is council tax costs. Five different ways you can slash your council tax. Some people are due serious money back, thousands of pounds in refunds from overpaid council tax over the years. There are millions of people missing out on discounts and council tax support. It's a huge part of people's expenditure and I'm going to run you through all the different ways that you can get money back and answer people's questions. We've also got a tell us on what's the biggest money secret you've ever kept? When was it? Who did you keep it secret from and why? Some fascinating responses there. We'll be talking about the increase in the premium bond rate and there's a mastermind today, Adrian, as always.
3:31 Martin Lewis? And today it's on the lifetime ISA, a subject we've talked about a good few times before on the show.
3:38 Speaker 03 Okay, I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.
3:48 Martin Lewis? Now, I promise we're going to get into the podcast proper in a moment. We're going to be talking about council tax, how you check and challenge your band, why you may be missing out on a discount, why you may be missing out on council tax support. We're going to talk about the premium bond rate, but Adrian and I are middle-aged men and when two middle-aged men get together, there's only one thing they talk about first.
4:09 Speaker 03 I just got the giggles then, Mark.
4:10 Martin Lewis? I know, I saw.
4:11 Speaker 03 It occurs to me every time we meet each other. We start off air, we have a conversation like we might have in a care home in 20 years' time.
4:19 Martin Lewis? It's just ailment discussion.
4:20 Speaker 03 All my rotator cuff's gone, I'm just falling apart, I've got a cough, I've got hay fever, all my back.
4:26 Martin Lewis? I'm a man in my early, mid 50s. I turned 54 at the weekend, so I'm early, mid 50s, who does a lot of exercise. And I think you have to make the choice at our age. Either you're not going to do any exercise, in which case your body's going to fall apart because you're not doing exercise, or you're going to do lots of exercise, in which case your body's going to break because you're doing lots of exercise. So I've been doing this press-up thing where I wanted to do 20,000, then I increased my challenge to 25,000 in a year. But my rotator cuff has now gone, so I haven't done press-ups for 10 days. Done 8,400 so far this year, but I'm now off the press-ups and it's very frustrating.
5:01 Speaker 03 But it says something about your psychological makeup, because you reduced it in what you'd said, the whole thing, to a binary absurdity. Is that you either do nothing and fall to pieces, or do so much you're knackerin' yourself. There is a happy median. I know it's not as exciting, but...
5:16 Martin Lewis? I don't understand, I've never met a clairvoyant, but, sorry, that was a happy median. Terrible pun. No, I'm a binary person, I'm nought or one, I don't have in-between.
5:26 Speaker 03 You're nought or 100.
5:27 Martin Lewis? Yeah, okay, well, that wouldn't be binary, Adrian. To be fair. So, and that is how I operate. So my exercise, you know, I do cardio every morning, I do gym, not this week because of the rotator cuff, gym session and weight session at least five times a week, and I do my 70 press-ups a day. And I'm upset, and I don't like missing. You're doing press-ups, so didn't you start on that list?
5:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm just starting. I went to do, I went to do one, I could, well, I couldn't do one at first, and I did one, and I'm building on, I'm 60 in March, next March, and I want to be able to do 60 press-ups before I'm 60. So I'm doing, I've got up to doing eight every day, and I'm increasing by T C sensible.
6:05 Martin Lewis? But the mistake, the mistake I made, I do three sets of 25 normally, is I started putting my feet up on a chair to do them, because I wanted to do incline press-ups to get the upper part of the chest, get some work out as well.
6:15 Speaker 03 Why don't you get Lara to sit on your back while you do it as well? And your daughter, and any family pets, and then your father-in-law and everyone else.
6:23 Martin Lewis? Yeah, I know.
6:27 Speaker 03 Some breaking news about premium bonds we just gained.
6:30 Martin Lewis? Yeah, so we're just hearing the premium bond fund rate is going to increase from 3.3% to 3.8% in July. Premium bonds, biggest single form of savings in the country. Hugely popular, in my view hugely overrated. Nowhere near as good returns as most people think, but people somehow like this. The infinitesimally small chance of you winning a million. I mean, on a one pound premium bond, you have a far better chance of landing three coins on that edge than you do of actually winning the million. It's billions to one against. But if you've got a bit more, it can work. So let's just talk through premium bonds. They have this prize fund rate, yeah, which is 3.8% or will be from July. And what people think is, aha, so if I put £100 in, I'd get 3.8% of that, which is £3.80. Uh-uh, that is not how it works.
7:15 Martin Lewis? What you actually have is an incredibly complicated, multinomial probability distribution to work out what you can win on average. So the smallest prize is £25. So the likelihood is, if you have £100 in there with what I call average luck, which I define as median luck. Can you remember your three different averages? It's not mastermind, don't worry.
7:39 Speaker 03 I can, I can. Go on then. The mean, the mean average, you add everything up and divide it by the number of things.
7:46 Martin Lewis? Correct.
7:47 Speaker 03 The median is when you put all the numbers in order and you pick the middle one.
7:51 Martin Lewis? Correct.
7:52 Speaker 03 And I've forgotten the other one.
7:53 Martin Lewis? The mode is the one where there's the single highest number of people in that category.
7:57 Speaker 03 Right.
7:58 Martin Lewis? So I define average luck as median luck. So basically, if we lined everybody up with £100 in a row in order of what they'd won, and we picked-
8:07 Speaker 03 £100 worth of the premium bond.
8:08 Martin Lewis? £100 worth of the premium bonds in order of what they won in a year, and we picked the person in the middle, that is what I define as average luck. So it's the median average. So if you've got £100 in, well, because the minimum pound it prizes 25 quid, even at 3.8%, the vast majority of people, I think it's probably, haven't worked out the probability because it's only just been announced, but I suspect over 90% of people will be nothing. And in fact, even if you have £1,000 in over a year with median luck- You will win nothing because for everybody who wins a bigger and bigger and bigger prize, quite a lot of people have to win nothing, which is why the prize fund, which is the mean average, is we're going to give out 3.8% of the total number of premium bonds, is
8:50 Martin Lewis? actually higher than the median average, line everybody up and put them in the middle. So with typical luck, even if you had the full £50,000 in, you would not get 3.8%. This next finger is made up, but it would be probably be somewhere around 3.5, 3.6%. And the less you have in with typical luck, you're the further away you are from likely getting the 3.8%. So therefore, if we're looking at this as a clinical financial decision as opposed to valuing in, but there's a chance I could win a million, then with typical luck, premium bonds are only really worth it for people who've got the maximum amount
9:32 Martin Lewis? in, which is £50,000, who are, have used up their cash ISAs because premium bonds are tax-free, like cash ISAs are tax-free because cash ISAs are currently paying, you know, the best cash ISA of 4.5%, premium bonds are only 3.8% on the prize fund rate. And you're going to be paying tax outside of that ISA on your savings. So you've used your personal savings allowance mainly at the higher or top rate. Then they can be good. And in those circumstances, I'm a fan of premium bonds. For everybody else, I'm not. And the big thing that people say to me, and I get this all the time, it always makes me laugh, is I go, yeah, but I win £25 every month. And it's sort of like, yeah, but if we added it up and you put that money in a savings account, you'd have a guaranteed win of £42 every month. So psychologically, they're a brilliant marketing sell. And they
10:15 Martin Lewis? raise money for the government and they're in NSNI, so they're perfectly safe. But the Financial Services Compensation Scheme means you're protected up to £120,000 per person per financial institution anyway, and you can only put £50,000 in premium bonds. So the prize fund has gone up. Many people will be happy. More people will put their money in, but many people are probably worse off having their money in there than they would be elsewhere. And it's only a product that actually makes real sense for you in certain circumstances.
10:41 Speaker 03 Yes, we want a council tax. A good choice to do this. It rose by an average of 4.9% for households in England last month. Bill's also on the up in Scotland and Wales. We had the council elections last week in many places which focused a few minds. So let's start with the big one. Check in and challenge your council tax ban. You've been doing this one for years.
11:03 Martin Lewis? I have indeed.
11:04 Speaker 03 I mean, I think it's one of those ones. It's just so depressing. Everybody knows it's a nonsense, the way it was done in the first place.
11:11 Martin Lewis? Yeah.
11:11 Speaker 03 And nobody's got the political will to have a complete, to organise it properly, because there'd be losers as well as winners, and politically it'd be disastrous.
11:21 Martin Lewis? In my view, council tax is a broken tax. I mean, we need to go back, and there'll be many people here, you know, in their 30s who will not remember how this all happened. So we had riots over what was called the community charge, but better known as the poll tax. Literal riots in the street over this tax. And therefore, the government had to come up with in the time, they had to come up with a new form of local taxation to replace it, and they came up with the council tax. And so what they needed to do, because the council tax was effectively based on the value of your house, they had to go around and they had to value properties across England, Scotland and Wales. And this was done in 1991.
12:01 Martin Lewis? And without any exaggeration, it was primarily done by what is called second gear valuations. Two people in a car, one driving, the other an estate agent, or a quantity surveyor, or someone of that ilk, who had a list of a few details about each property on a piece of paper in front of them, and they went past having a look going, ban C, ban D, ban C, ban B. And that's how your council tax ban was originally done. Now, in Wales, they have re-banded. This 1991 valuation, and council tax started in 1993, was meant to be a stop-gap
12:41 Martin Lewis? valuation, just to set the system up. But everybody knows what I'm about to say. That 1991 stop-gap
12:49 Martin Lewis? Valuation, if you are in England or Scotland, is the only mainstream valuation we have ever had. Unless you've got a new built house and in certain circumstances, and is still what dictates which council tax band you are in today. Even with all the moves we've had, even with the fact that we knew it was erroneous at the time. And that's why there are an estimated four hundred thousand homes in England and Scotland in the wrong band, some too high, some too low. And you can, although they don't make it as easy as they should, you can check and challenge your band.
13:22 Speaker 03 Okay.
13:23 Martin Lewis? But you have to do it carefully.
13:24 Speaker 03 Emma wants to know how to do that, so go on.
13:27 Martin Lewis? So let's do the check first, and the check is pretty simple. And I've got two steps to it, and it's very important, and I'll explain why there are two steps to it. The challenge is harder. The first check is to find whether you're in a higher band than a neighbour in a preferably identical, but if not as similar as you can possibly get, property. Now, don't worry, you don't need to go next door and knock on and say, ah, what council tax band are you in place? Because it might not make you popular. You can go onto gov.uk for England or the Scottish Assessors Association for Scotland, England and Wales, gov.uk. And you can just look up council tax bands there, both yours and other people's. So you can have a look, and many people will have done this, to see what your band and other people's band is.
14:11 Martin Lewis? So the first check is the neighbour's check. Am I in a higher band than neighbours in an identical property?
14:22 Martin Lewis? But, and this is really, really important, and I've seen some of the questions we've got coming in, which just have misunderstood this point. You are asking for your band to be reviewed.
14:34 Martin Lewis? You may be in a higher band than neighbours in a similar or identical property because their band is too low, not because your band is too high. And by reviewing it, you could get their band increased, which you do not want to happen. It will not make you popular to have all your neighbours' bands increased.
14:50 Speaker 03 But, hang on, but if we're striving towards fairness, then we should want fairness, shouldn't we? I mean, look, I totally get your point.
14:58 Martin Lewis? So let me try and answer that in a semi-political way. The system is broken. Our political classes have never had the chutzpah to rework and revalue this system as it desperately needed because it would be incredibly unpopular because there'd be winners and losers, right? I mean, never mind just fixing the system we've got. You could also look at, because just remember, the band you are in, let's be absolutely plain. When you go and look at this on the chart, the band you are in is literally based on council tax bands from back in 1991. You know, a band A property is a property under 40 grand in England, under 27 grand in Scotland. You can't buy properties at that amount anymore.
15:42 Martin Lewis? The top band is over 320 grand in England, over 212,000 pounds in Scotland. I mean, the numbers are different because it's a different world. And not just updating what we have, but you could think of a whole different way and whole different forms of banding and, you know, people in very big houses don't pay proportionately that much more. This is why the Chancellor's had to chosen to jemmy it with what's going to be called being called the mansion tax, which is basically a council tax surcharge. So you're right, Adrian, but I'm not sure that that predicates that individuals should go around snooping and trying to get their neighbours' band increased. I mean, that's an individual's decision if they choose to do it.
16:17 Speaker 03 You're trying to get your own decreased and you might have the effect of getting the others increased. But A, would they know it was your fault? And B, that implies there are people who, this happens and every now and then somebody gets an unwelcome letter from saying, well, we're bumping your council.
16:35 Martin Lewis? And this is why when I invented my cheque and challenge system back in 2007, although we finessed it, right? And I did it, I always remember doing it. It was because I wrote a little bit about it and I put it in my web forum and I got some responses and people tried it. And then I said, let me know how your experience is. And they came through and then I wrote a guide on it and said, test this. And then I got loads of feedback and then I did the guide formally and I did a big telly programme. My biggest telly audience I've ever had on telly, I think it was about six and a half million. And was using those research and the reason I came up with the second cheque. Is to stop that issue. And the second check is one I called the valuation check. Now, it's really important that I say to people that the valuation check is not an evidential check.
17:18 Martin Lewis? When you come to challenging your band, they will not take this into account. This second check is one I invented so that you can work out that on the huge likelihood it's you who's in too higher band, not your neighbours who are in too lower band. Right? And the valuation check is this. You need to assess your house's value back in 1991. It sounds complicated, but effectively, if you've bought a house since 1991, or one of your neighbours has an identical property since 1991, you just need to back calculate it to 1991. And you can do that in a complicated way using the house price indices, but there is a free tool available online that will do this for you. I'm just not allowed to tell you where it is.
18:01 Speaker 03 Right, okay.
18:02 Martin Lewis? Right? So if then that you've done both checks and both indicate, first of all, that you're in a high band and the neighbours in an identical or similar properties, and second, that on your back calculation, you are on the high end of your band or possibly in too higher band, then you should be looking at challenging. But if you only pass the first one and it looks like you're in the right band, you need to be aware, you could be dropping your neighbour's council tax band.
18:27 Speaker 03 Okay, so you challenge it. Inherent in that is that it might end up going up.
18:35 Martin Lewis? And I, and I've had probably tens of thousands of successes of this reported to me since I launched the system and they still come in regularly. In fact, just by chance, just as I'll do it, when I was coming in this morning, I hope I've got it here, where was it? I just read it. And via the magical podcasting, or more technically, the magic of editing, I now have that case study. Because I haven't asked for their permission to read it out, as it was just emailed into me via my website, I'm going to read it to you anonymously. It said, "Martin, following your suggestion to check on council tax banding, we submitted evidence over a year ago. Patience paid off because on my husband's birthday in April this year..."
19:17 Martin Lewis? We received a nine thousand six hundred pounds as a rebate since we moved into the property in nineteen ninety one and a drop in our council tax band. Thank you for inspiring us to do this. Well, I'm absolutely denied, anonymous person, that you did that. So the whole point about getting your band lowered is not only is the band itself lowered, but you get a backdated payout going back to when you moved into the property or nineteen ninety three, whichever is sooner. So if you moved in in nineteen ninety nine, you'll go back to nineteen ninety nine. And that's why this is so important, this conversation, because this is a substantial amount of money we're talking about for many people who are in the wrong band.
20:02 Martin Lewis? I have never had anyone who's used my system tell me that their neighbour's band has gone up. I've heard of it going up, but not people who've done both checks.
20:10 Speaker 03 Okay.
20:11 Martin Lewis? So my hope is that that valuation check done properly. But you need to understand, and there are people out there doing, oh, it doesn't really show, but I'll try anyway. Well, then that's your risk. That's your risk.
20:21 Speaker 03 Michelle, we live in a row of fifteen stone cottages. They are grade two listed in the conservation area. All the cottages are council tax B. There's one house in the middle, but exactly the same as the others is band A. How can I challenge it? How can I challenge it, please?
20:39 Martin Lewis? I can't work out that from that, whether you're in the band A or you're in the band B. I mean, if you're in the band A.
20:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:46 Martin Lewis? Then you're on the, no, she must be in the band B from the nature of the question because you can't be lower than a band A. So she must be in a band B.
20:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:53 Martin Lewis? I mean, it sounds to me very likely that the identical house in the middle is in too lower band. I mean, that would be my starting presumption that all the houses in band B are in the right band and the band A is in too lower band.
21:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:07 Martin Lewis? So I would be very cautious in this situation. But if you go through this and you find and you do a valuation check and it looks very, very clearly, I would want in that circumstance, very robust.
21:22 Martin Lewis? Deep, clear water between your valuation in 1991 and a band B valuation. Not just at the limit, I'd want you to be well below it, then you could look at doing a challenge. I mean, and I have to say, I have had successes over the years of entire streets being revalued. It isn't unheard of.
21:37 Speaker 03 Minesh, I've been disputing my band with the local council and not getting anywhere. I had a new build from 2013 on a semi-detached and the neighbour is band B, whereas I'm band C. How is this possible? It's a semi-detached.
21:54 Martin Lewis? Well, it's possible because they valued you differently. So let's just go into the-
21:58 Speaker 03 Well, how can it make sense? How can there be any logic to it? Well, we don't look for logic.
22:02 Martin Lewis? We don't look for logic. We look for, I mean, I am presuming anybody doing this has been through my first two checks and has clearly passed the neighbour's check and the valuation check. And if you haven't, you must do that. But on that assumption, you can submit a challenge to your band. Now, in England and Wales, there is a formal challenge and an informal challenge. In Scotland, there is only a formal challenge. For those in Northern Ireland, just as a note, there is no council tax, which is why I'm not talking about Northern Ireland here. Now, the formal challenge, very frustratingly, can be done by whether you own or rent, but in general terms, you must have lived in the property for six months or less. If renters are challenging, by the way, by courtesy, you should notify your landlord.
22:45 Martin Lewis? There are some other reasons you can do a formal challenge, which is a fundamental change in the property, say from house to flats, change in its use, a party's now business, for example, the local area's changed, you've just had a nightclub built next door, or in Scotland only, there've been significant property price drops where you are. So just as an aside, this is one of those life financial management rulings everyone needs to remember. Whenever you move home-
23:13 Martin Lewis? Remember to check your council tax band and do the check and challenge within the first six months because the formal challenge is so much easier than the informal challenge route. So that's my first point. Within the formal challenge, you don't actually need to submit evidence. You do within the informal challenge and there are good guides online of how to do an informal challenge. But the big thing that people in England and Wales can do that you need to know about, and this is the powerhouse improvement that I added to my guide about two years ago, is you need to request what is called your PAD, your property attribute data, which is held on the gov.uk site. You are absolutely able to go and get it.
23:57 Martin Lewis? You go onto it, it's got a, in the box when you go online is, I think my band is wrong. On the text on the next page, add, I want to request my property attribute data. The online form will ask you a few questions. Now, what this is all about is the property attribute data is literally what the Valuation Office Agency who sorts council tax knows about your house. It will include its age or period, its type, semi-detached end of terrace, its floor area, number of bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms, number of floors. And if you find that the PAD is wrong, that is a big light. And we've had quite a lot of people who are in the wrong band have looked at their PAD and gone, no, that's not correct about my house. And that is, that's the strongest possible evidence.
24:41 Martin Lewis? Now, you know, let's be plain here. If you're saying you're in too high a band and it says you've got two bedrooms and you've got four bedrooms, that's not, not the right way round. You know, if it says you've got four bedrooms, you've got two bedrooms, that is the right way round. I mean, let's be sensible of what we're talking. But a crucial stage, Minessh, you have to get your PAD details and you have to go and check, are your PAD details correct about the property? And if they are, well, that's very strong. What you then need to do is you then need to then go and identify neighbouring or nearby properties. This is for informal, you don't have to do this in a formal challenge, but I would do it anyway. You then, and when I say in this, this step, identify neighbouring or nearby properties, this isn't like you did in the checks. We're now in the challenge phase.
25:23 Martin Lewis? To take real work, you need to be identifying up to five addresses in the same street or estate. Though in the countryside, the valuation office agency will consider similar properties within an area as wide as 10 miles. They must have the same style or similar features, so semi-detached house must be compared with semi-detached house. They must be of a similar age, don't compare the new build with the Victorian one. They must be of a similar size, comparable properties can be smaller and larger within 10%. And you're then looking and saying, look at all these details, the details you have on me are wronged. I'm going to give you a comparator to five of that per houses and that is why I think I'm in the wrong band. So, look, and we need to be honest, we're on the radio here.
26:04 Martin Lewis? This is a process and you will be able to find step by step help and templates to do this process online. Really what we're talking about today is the clarion call of what you should or shouldn't be doing, whether this is or isn't right for you. So the next stage to go through is to go and use that, the online help that's available to get you through this.
26:24 Speaker 03 Nicola, re-challenging banding in a new build house, in terms of finding similar properties, which are the implication being that the new build is different to the surrounding ones. Can I use, say, a house built in the 1970s? It feels like new builds get higher banding just because they're new. And when you get the banding notification, there's absolutely no explanation of how it was determined.
26:44 Martin Lewis? None of this system is transparent or good. I mean, it shouldn't work this way. And interestingly, one of the things, we've talked before on the show, I got the government to change council tax debt collection recently. And we'll be talking later about discounts, including severe mental impairment, which we got them to change some rules as well. One of my requests was to get rid of the formal informal rules where you have to do the challenge within six months. Because I think it's ridiculous, because people don't, you know, people don't know how it's been going on. They will look at that, but they haven't done it yet. So, look, you're right. If you're in a new building, you're the only new build home in your area, it's really going to be very difficult to do this. And I don't think it's fair to say, I have no evidence to say that new build homes are valued on too higher band.
27:24 Martin Lewis? But clearly, new build is a very difficult comparator to an older house if you are the only one. And people won't like me saying this, but there's a bit of shrug your shoulders here. There's a bit of the system's broken, you do what you can do, and if you can't do any more, you can't do any more. No, that's it.
27:42 Speaker 03 Willow, I need to change my band. I need to change my band. I've no idea where to start finding the price of my property from years ago. Willow's situation is that they're in a row of terrace houses which are in band B and the rest of the very long road is in band A.
27:58 Martin Lewis? Okay, so she's in band B, everyone's in band A. If your house has not been bought or sold since 1993, well then, if you're telling me they're all identical properties, one of those houses on those street will have been bought or sold since 1993. You go on to the, you know, the right moves of this world and the property price trackers, you can find what other properties have been bought and sold for. Then you need to convert it back to 1991. So you're just looking, find the most, if your house is, you've been in it a long time, find the most similar house to yours. And in fact, if there are three or four that have sold, get all of the prices, work out what they were worth back in 1991, you know, get the prices from the, the property websites that are, it's free, you can just do it online,
28:41 Martin Lewis? it's dead easy. And then convert them all into 1991 prices and take an average and see if that works for you.
28:46 Speaker 03 Okay, great. Did you bring your BAFTA in to show me, by the way?
28:50 Martin Lewis? I did. I've got a bad shoulder and it's really, it's properly really heavy. It weighs about four, five kilos.
28:55 Speaker 03 That's the worst injury ever. I've put my shoulder out, carrying all my awards. Oh, I've hurt my shoulder.
29:03 Martin Lewis? No, I didn't bring it in, but it was very, very lovely to get and it was an incredible.
29:09 Speaker 03 There was a lovely photo of you and Laura. I felt, I felt not tearful exactly, but I had a little, little catch in my throat when I, when I saw.
29:16 Martin Lewis? Well, I cried during my speech and then they cut to my poor wife who, who was looking beautiful with, you know, crying her eyes out with mascara running down. But then again, as I've had so many wonderful messages and thank you to everybody who sent me lovely messages, but most people told me they were crying too. So I think maybe we all had a bit of a cry as a nation during the middle.
29:33 Speaker 03 Okay, does you good every now and then.
29:39 Martin Lewis? Cancel tax, do tell us.
29:41 Speaker 03 Next, I've just came from instructions from Barb after all.
29:44 Martin Lewis? Did that go on air? Shall we just make sure? Adrian said, I forgot what we're doing, what we're doing now. And I went, we're going to say we're coming back to cancel tax, but we'll do tell us first. So, but why don't you do that because nobody noticed?
29:57 Speaker 03 The tell us is, the tell us is great. Go on, tell us about the tell us.
30:03 Martin Lewis? The tell us is in the wrong file. So that's good. What's the biggest money secret you've ever kept? When was it? Who was it? Secret from and why? And why is it okay to tell now? Quite a lot of people say, well, it's a secret. I'm not telling you. Yes, in the question, it said, and why is it okay to tell now? So I don't want you to tell your secrets that are secret. I want you to tell your secrets that were secret. So why don't you start, Adrian?
30:27 Speaker 03 Okay. Do you know what? I've got.
30:31 Martin Lewis? Shall I start?
30:32 Speaker 03 You start.
30:32 Martin Lewis? I'll do Ronnie.
30:33 Speaker 03 I've got, this is going terribly well. Because I've got last week's tell us.
30:37 Martin Lewis? Yes, so did I. And that, yes, that's why. But it's in the, if you, if you go in there, it's in the file below. What's Ronnie had a boss that gave me a fiver every week to take his car to the car wash. I used to take it to my house and wash it in my driveway. That's not a bad little secret. You're still washing the car. You got a fiver for it. That's relatively entrepreneurial. I don't think that one's too bad. Shall I carry on?
31:01 Speaker 03 I've got ones that have just come in, actually.
31:03 Martin Lewis? Okay. So all the planning and work I do to select a perfect format and mix them up is all going to go to pot. You go for it.
31:09 Speaker 03 It's a bit like that two Ronnie sketch where we're doing last week's tell us this week. Answering the question before. Where are we? Yes, my wife and I own child trust funds for both of our children. We plan to ensure they both had 10K when they became 18. Kept it from them till they were 14 and 16. So not letting them know that's there.
31:31 Martin Lewis? I think that's a pretty common secret from your children about the money. As an aside, the government is writing to 750,021 year olds at the moment to tell them where their child trust funds are. Child trust funds predecessor to the junior ISA, but the state added money. The average amount in them is £2,000, but many have lost track of them. So if you get that letter, it will tell you who your child trust fund provider is. And then go directly to that provider. Be careful going through anywhere that you're told to because it might be a scam. And then see if you've got the money. But for everyone aged, well, it's around fifteen to around twenty three. Has money in a child trust fund unless you've accessed it already. Millions of people have lost touch with them. You can go to gov.uk and find where your child trust fund provider is. As I say, the average is two thousand two hundred pounds.
32:15 Martin Lewis? Some may have less, some may have more, depending on whether money was added to it, whether it was saved or invested. Just on the gov.uk tool, if you're under sixteen, a parent must use the tool. If you're eighteen or over, you must use it yourself. If you're sixteen to eighteen, it can be a parental guardian or the child themselves. Massively important that people are reconnected with their child trust funds.
32:36 Speaker 03 Okay, let's, I've got another one here. I like this one actually. I won five thousand pounds with Brighton Hove Albion in nineteen ninety two. It was a fighting fund for supporters to keep the club going through tough times. I kept it secret from my mates until I was called onto the pitch at half time on Boxing Day to collect my novelty size.
32:55 Martin Lewis? She was so outed. Thankfully, none of those problems now with Tony Bloom in charge, so that's a good thing. Phil, my wife passed away on the second of October twenty fifteen. She always put more money away without me knowing. My mum said, have your own money. Never told me, but ha ha, our daughter knew. Oh, and then he says, PS, miss her. I'm wishing you the best, Phil, and it's good you miss her. You loved her. Keep her in your heart, mate.
33:19 Speaker 03 Mike, as a teenager, my dad would weekly ask me to put twenty five pounds of Cuny's car, but I always put twenty pounds in and pocketed the five pounds. He even had the car into a garage as he was convinced the MPG was so bad. He passed twenty plus years ago and I've come to terms with knowing I'm going to hell.
33:39 Martin Lewis? Oh, poor, poor Mike. Joe, kept throwing extra money I had at the mortgage and didn't tell him that I'd paid it off. Kept it a secret for three months until his birthday, then gave him a card with the letter from the bank in it saying your mortgage has closed. He thought we still owed twenty thousand pounds. He was saying, I don't know how you did it. I don't know how you did it. Constantly for the next fortnight. Good secret, that one. Good secret.
34:03 Speaker 03 Kirsty, bought a beautiful but very expensive olive tree at Chelsea Flower Show about ten years ago. My husband still thinks I'm going to want it in a raffle.
34:12 Martin Lewis? There's a lot of that goes on. I mean, this is all, we're doing the nice stuff, but actually hidden debts are a really big problem. And you need to come clean about your debt, because you've got any joint problems, it can affect the, the credit score of the other person as well, if you've got any joint accounts together. Rhiannon, when I was eight, I purposefully put twenty-one penny sweets in a paper bag at the shop and paid twenty p. Rhiannon, the guilt ate me up so badly that the next day, I only put fifteen sweets in the bag and paid them the usual twenty p. I've never forgotten it. I felt like a criminal and couldn't live with myself. Ah.
34:45 Speaker 03 In a similar vein, forty plus years ago, the post office counter assistant overpaid my family allowance by ten pounds. I went back in and said it wasn't right. She pointed to a sign saying, mistakes cannot be rectified when you've left the counter. So I walked away and kept it.
35:02 Martin Lewis? Well, that's not a similar vein to me. I think she did everything right, didn't she? The first one, yeah, she stole a sweet, but then she paid back five times its worth. So she, you know, what do they call it? Justice? Restorative justice there. That was absolutely fine. Voluntary restorative justice. In this one, I mean, they can't have it both ways. They can't say, when we underpay you, it's done, you've accepted your money, but we overpaid you, you have to give it us back. I think that's absolutely fine. And she was told, she went and did everything she could try. David, I won ten thousand pounds on the lottery and didn't tell anyone for years, as I knew they'd all suddenly become friendly.
35:35 Speaker 03 I mean, there must be a figure for the biggest lottery win that somebody's managed to keep completely secret from everyone.
35:42 Martin Lewis? Yeah. Well, it'd be millions, I would have thought.
35:44 Speaker 03 Yeah. But I mean, how do you keep millions secret?
35:46 Martin Lewis? You just move.
35:47 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, but that would reveal you had some money for the move, wouldn't it?
35:52 Martin Lewis? Well, they might, yeah, but not everyone who wins the lottery doesn't have any money.
35:55 Speaker 03 No.
35:56 Martin Lewis? No. I'm being purely hypothetical here, but I can see a situation where somebody's got, says, actually, we've decided we're going to emigrate and go to Australia. We love you all, you folks. And then, you know, they move from their two up, two down into their two hundred up and two hundred down when they get there. Yeah. Let's do one more. You do, you do, Linda.
36:12 Speaker 03 My ninety-four-year-old dad told me recently how his mum, my grandmother, purchased a brand-new set of sheets. Every time she was short of cash to fund her bingo trip, she'd then get the sheets out, still in their packing, and tell her husband she'd had to buy new sheets for their home. He then gave her the money for the sheets, which then went back in the cupboard for next time. Grandad ever tumble to her secrets?
36:36 Martin Lewis? Tumble dry to her secrets, yes. What a sheet trick.
36:39 Speaker 03 Yes, very good. You've got to look at, how do you do these terrible puns and still win a BAFTA?
36:44 Martin Lewis? I think, I think that's what I got them for.
36:47 Speaker 03 No, it's just that your BAFTA bracket, not for the pun.
36:50 Martin Lewis? Lifetime achievement for punning.
36:51 Speaker 03 You would have got it three years ago if that had been for the pun.
36:53 Martin Lewis? Thanks mate.
36:57 Martin Lewis? Shall we get back to council tax now? Because we've done council tax check and challenge, and as I say, if you're looking at that, go and step by step it. But there are lots of discounts and council tax support that people are missing out on as well.
37:08 Speaker 03 Okay. So we should probably move to that. Talk us through the basics of that then.
37:11 Martin Lewis? So we'll do council tax discounts now. This does get, I'm sorry, this does get a little complicated to explain. I'm going to try and do my best. So, council tax is based on how many people live in the property. So the standard number is two or more. If it's two or more, you pay the full council tax. If it's one, you get the single person discount, which is 25%. But then there are categories of people who are disregarded for council tax. In other words, you, in a good way, that's not a bad way, in a good way, you're disregarded. You don't count. Therefore, if two adults are living there, but one of them doesn't count, then you effectively get the 25% discount.
37:56 Martin Lewis? That's the simplest way to explain, although it does get more complicated, but have that as the big picture starter. So let's go through the different categories of discounted for council tax, not counted as an adult. Well, someone under age 18 is pretty obvious. Full time students on a minimum one year course, full time, is another obvious one. And then the next one is the severe mental impairment discount, which is a severe impairment of intelligence and social functioning, which appears to be permanent. Now, I hate that term, SMI. I actually used to say SMI because I don't like saying severe mental impairment. They are changing it as part of the results of some of the things that we've looked at campaigning to a sig-
38:38 Martin Lewis? Severe cognitive impairment. To get a severe mental impairment massively undercommunicated, nowhere near enough people know about this. Common conditions include dementia, Alzheimer's, severe strokes, severe Parkinson's. You have to be medically certified as having an SMI. So a doctor is going to have to certify that you have one. And often it'll be your partner or your loved ones who are getting you that certification. And you need to be receiving a qualifying benefit. Now, interestingly, on SMI, not all the qualifying benefits are means tested. Attendance allowance is a non-mains tested benefit for people who need help with living during the day or night. So it is still possible anyone can get an SMI discount even with that receiving a qualifying
39:22 Martin Lewis? benefit because there are some non-mains tested benefits in there. So it's not all about the money you have. So those are the three anyway, under 18s, full-time students, SMI. And I should note, another one of the big wins we had recently, and I am showing off about it because I've been talking about this for a decade, and we got Wales to do it first, now England is going to be following suit next April. I've said to you before, this sounds trivial, Adrian. But councils under-publicise the SMI, and then their forms are all different, which makes it incredibly difficult for someone like me to give guidance of how you fill a form in, right, for many vulnerable people. And the government from next April has agreed it will have one form and one piece of publication. So wherever you go, it will be a standard format. So me and Carers UK and Alzheimer's, we can all actually give you nice ed guidance to
40:06 Martin Lewis? filling in the form, which you can't do at the moment because every form's different. Not every form's different, lots of councils have different forms. Then, so you've got those three, then you've got live-in carers, that's someone who is unpaid for caring for over 35 hours a week and not caring for your spouse, partner or a child under aged 18. So then you are a carer. So let's go through it. If there are two adults, qualifying adults, living in the property, even if there's also full-time students, even if there's also people with SMIs, you pay the full amount. The other people don't matter, you've just got to have two, and if there are two qualifying adults. If there's one adult... With an under 18 or a full-time student and/or a carer, it's 25% off.
40:50 Martin Lewis? If the only people living in the house are someone with an SMI and a carer, which is a common situation, you get 50% off. So that's the sort of one that doesn't make sense in a way. And if only discounted people are living together, for example, a household of full-time students, you do not pay any council tax. If someone with an SMI is living with an adult, a single adult, you would get 25% off, another common situation. And in some cases, these discounts can be backdated, but it's council by council. Something else we've asked them for that they haven't decided yet is standardised backdating rules. Wales has it, and Wales backdates since the time you were eligible to claim.
41:28 Speaker 03 Okay, we've had questions on all this. Anna, how about getting the powers that be to give us a single, or single peeps, a 50% discount off council tax instead of the 25%? It's not fair.
41:39 Martin Lewis? I'm going to do an explanation on this, not a judgement.
41:42 Speaker 03 Okay.
41:43 Martin Lewis? When council tax was first set up, it was meant to be based on the value of the property. The previous local taxation, the community charge, was based solely on the number of people in the property. So when, they tried to get away from that because of the riots that we talked about earlier. But then there was a big lobby that said, hold on, this isn't fair. What happens if you've got one person living in a three-bedroom property? You know, they're going to be paying the same as six adults sharing that same property. So there was a sop done for that, which was the single person discount, the 25% off. Now, people always say to me, why isn't it 50% off? And then, and I'm not, I'm not arguing that it should or shouldn't be, that's a political decision. But I'm not sure why people, well, I know why people say 50%. They think, well, two adults in a home, therefore, if there's only one adult, it should be half.
42:28 Martin Lewis? But who says there are two adults in a home? Some homes, you've got two 19-year-olds living there and two, and their parents, that's four adults. You've got a household of young people sharing, and there are 10 of them, that's 10 adults. So the idea that there are two adults living in all homes, therefore, if there's one adult living in a home, you should get a 50% discount. That logic doesn't 100% stand up, although I know why people say it. But the answer was, why is it only 25%? Because this was done in 1991 and hasn't been changed since, and the system is broken.
42:55 Speaker 03 Pirani, I'm a carer for my father, we live together. He gets his pension, attendants allowance, and I get carers allowance. Should we be able to get a council tax reduction?
43:05 Martin Lewis? Well, if there's only the two of you in the household, I would think you're entitled to at least the 25% if your father has a severe mental impairment. Now, the fact he gets attendance allowance signifies to me there's quite a chance he would be due a severe mental impairment discount. So you tick the getting a qualifying benefit. It is about a doctor certifying that you have, let me just check the exact phrasing. It is a severe mental impairment that affects someone's social functioning. Right? So if a doctor will sign that off, because just getting attendance allowance doesn't mean you get SMI, you need it to be signed as an SMI. Well, then you're certainly entitled to a 25% discount and possibly entitled to a 50% discount if you're a carer in the right circumstances.
43:50 Speaker 03 Helen says there is a reduction of one band available for people who have to live downstairs in a two-storey house due to ill health. This isn't well publicised.
43:59 Martin Lewis? I was coming to it, so I'm delighted to get that question. Basically, if you have disabilities, physical disabilities generally, then, and you have to make adoptions to your home because of physical disabilities, you can ask, and you have to repeat this every year, actually, it's one of the, the others are sort of automatic each year, this one you have to ask every year for a reduction of one band level, and it's worth looking at for people in that situation.
44:20 Speaker 03 Okay. Claire, are, what happened there?
44:25 Martin Lewis? The desk just lowered, I think you pressed a button to lower the desk. It sort of touched the top of my knee.
44:31 Speaker 03 Unless there's an earthquake.
44:33 Martin Lewis? No, I think it was definitely a desk quake.
44:35 Speaker 03 Shambles. Claire.
44:40 Martin Lewis? That doesn't account as adjusting your property, by the way, is that, that's what you're doing, I mean, I'll lower the desk.
44:44 Speaker 03 Are local authorities allowed to make it deliberately difficult for you to apply for SMI exemption? I live in Cornwall, and there's nowhere on their website to make an application for this, or if there is, it's very well hidden.
44:56 Martin Lewis? Look, I, I mean, I first launched my severe mental impairment campaign, it was, I think it's over a decade ago, and we basically, the cold called councils to ask about it, and half of the staff back then hadn't heard of the discount. So I think things have improved, but nowhere near enough, which is why we've requested this sort of standardised leaflet, standardised application form that should go on every council, and that'll be coming in from next April. I mean, just to put this in context, this week separately, the carers discount on council tax. We did a spot check of pretty much every council about three months ago and found that of one in five councils in England had incorrect information, misleading information about the council lounge, 69 councils. And they were basically missing out, they hadn't updated their doc data until, since it was,
45:41 Martin Lewis? I think it was about 2013 when the rules changed. So all the list of who could qualify, they were just missing lots of the major categories. They have now on the back of us publicising it and writing to every council, fix that. I say us, that's my money-saving expert team, I think they deserve the credit for that, brilliant kit, did all the work, well done kit, you're a star on that. And we've got them all to change it. But there's still many people who've gone and read those websites and had incorrect information. This is commonplace. What I would say is, yes, go on to your council's websites to look at the discounts, but it is worth looking at other independent sources too, because council websites and council forms are, not all of them are good enough. Simple as that. That's why I do the campaigning.
46:19 Speaker 03 Okay, do you want to talk about council tax support?
46:21 Martin Lewis? I do, this is so important. Up to 2.25 million people on lower incomes are missing out on council tax support, worse up to £1,500. This is separate from discounts. Every council runs its own council tax reduction scheme, so what you get depends on where you live. There is no standardised definition and there's no standardised, you know, amount that you get reduced. Some councils will cut your bill by up to 100%. It is a jungle of variation, so it really depends on each council. Now, the biggest mistake people make about this is they think, if I'm eligible for universal credit, which is, you know, the catch-all national benefit from, then I'll, I'll get my council tax support.
47:06 Martin Lewis? Uh-uh. They are totally separate systems. You have to apply for council tax support separately. And the people who are likely to get it are those people who are on universal credit or pension credit. But you won't get it automatically and that's why so many people miss out. In England and Wales, gov.uk will show you your council's details and then you can then go to it and apply. In Scotland, mygov scotland. You may be asked to provide evidence. For example, if you've got a low household income, you might need to prove your identity, your rent or your mortgage payments, your income and savings. But I think if you're generally somebody who's on universal credit and on a lower income, you should check out your council's criteria for council tax support. I mean, two and a quarter million people are likely, it's impossible to say because
47:50 Martin Lewis? it's council by council, missing out on that. And it can be big money.
47:53 Speaker 03 Okay, have we got time for a question?
47:55 Martin Lewis? Let's do that. Yeah, go on very quickly.
47:56 Speaker 03 My daughter and I are both low income and get universal credit. I've asked my local councillor if we're entitled to a discount but not heard back. What should I do?
48:04 Martin Lewis? Get in touch with them and persevere. I'll do a couple more of questions on that because I know we've got more of that when we do the pod only, but we should probably play this right now.
48:20 Martin Lewis? Adrian, you got it wrong last week, which means the score stands that you've got 19 right and 38 wrong in this three option multiple choice quiz, which means I'm afraid you're back to...
48:33 Martin Lewis? No better than random chance, but let's get on with it. Now, everybody, our Adrian was stopped in the street by a very attractive woman. She said to him, "You're Adrian Charles, aren't you?" For one glorious moment, he thinks this is how James Bond must feel. He lifts an eyebrow and says in his smoothest West Midlands spy voice, "Yes, the name's Charles. Adrian Charles." Could you just do that for us?
49:00 Speaker 03 The name's Charles. Adrian Charles.
49:02 Martin Lewis? Marvelous. "I thought so," she says. "You do that podcast with Martin, don't you? Can you ask him something? I've been saving into a LISA, but I've just inherited some money. I want to buy a house. I don't need a mortgage anymore. Can I still use my LISA?" "Oh," says Adrian, slightly deflated, but styling it out, "You don't need Martin Lewis. I'm here." So Adrian, what we want to know is what did you answer and we want the correct answer at all. She wants to use her lifetime ISA she's been saving into as a first time buyer, which you get a 25% bonus on on buying a qualifying property under £450,000 without a mortgage. Is it A, no, you can't do it without paying the withdrawal penalty?
49:46 Martin Lewis? B, yes, but you won't get the 25% bonus? C, yes, and you can get the 25% bonus?
49:54 Martin Lewis? Do you understand the question?
49:55 Speaker 03 Yes, I do. Have you given me all available information?
49:59 Martin Lewis? So, the question is, she wants to buy a first time property using a lifetime ISA, but she doesn't need a mortgage. She's just gonna buy it outright. Can she get the 25% bonus that's been added to a lifetime ISA and use it towards a mortgage? So, A, no, she'd have to pay a withdrawal penalty, which would take that bonus off effectively.
50:19 Speaker 03 Okay, but she didn't need a mortgage?
50:21 Martin Lewis? She doesn't, and she's not getting a mortgage.
50:23 Speaker 03 And this is a first property?
50:24 Martin Lewis? First property.
50:25 Speaker 03 And the property's worth how much?
50:27 Martin Lewis? Under £450,000. So it's worth £412,713.12. Under £450,000. So it qualifies in every other way. The question is, does the fact she's not getting a mortgage invalidate it? So, A, no. B, yeah, she won't get the 25% bonus, but she'll get her money back. C, because remember that the withdrawal penalty means you get back less than you put in. B, basically you get back what she put in. Or C, she will get the bonus.
50:51 Speaker 03 Well, I, obviously, as usual, I haven't been concentrating hard enough.
50:57 Martin Lewis? We have talked about this in the programme before.
50:58 Speaker 03 I know, I know we have, but I don't remember the mortgage. Why would the mortgage be here or there on this? Because it's to help you get the mortgage. I would hope, logic would say it's C. I think it's B.
51:11 Martin Lewis? So you're gonna say, yes, but she just won't get the 25% bonus?
51:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
51:16 Martin Lewis? Well, it's not B. You've locked in.
51:19 Speaker 03 Right.
51:19 Martin Lewis? So let's have an uh straight away, because we're rushing. And I'm afraid she won't get the bonus at all. The answer here is the lifetime ISA. To get it, you have to be doing it when you are getting a mortgage on a property. And I presume the original reason for...
51:37 Speaker 03 Well, you just get a five grand mortgage then?
51:39 Martin Lewis? Well, it's quite difficult to get a five grand mortgage. That's what you'd have to do. You would have to go and mortgage a part of the property in order to get the bonus. Whether that's worth it or not for you depends on the terms of the mortgage. But if you'd saved a lot in a life, so if you'd been maxing it out and had sort of six or seven grand worth of free money, it could well be worth getting a mortgage. I'm not sure you're going to get one for five grand though, you're going to need to get one for bigger than that and it's going to be a hassle. But the rules are effectively, because the lifetime ISA was brought in to help those people get on the housing ladder who couldn't afford to. Clearly, if you don't need a mortgage and you've got the cash, you can afford to and therefore it wasn't set up to be able to help you. So lifetime ISAs do require you to get a mortgage for you to be able to use them.
52:15 Martin Lewis? So hands up, when I was having a quick listen to the podcast to review it afterwards, I listened to my answer and didn't think I was clear enough. So I just wanted to add a couple of notes here. The correct answer in Money Mastermind was answer A, you'd pair withdrawal penalty. And this is really important. The rules on LISAs are plain. You only get the 25% bonus if you're buying a qualifying property under qualifying rules, which means you have a non-buy-to-let mortgage for a UK residential property that costs under £450,000. Or you take the money out once your age over 60. If you take money out for any other reason, you would have to pair withdrawal penalty.
52:58 Martin Lewis? Now, the withdrawal penalty is 25% and this can get a little confusing. The bonus is 25% and that is automatically added each month. And the withdrawal penalty is 25%, which some people wrongly assume means you get back what you put in. Unfortunately, the maths doesn't work like that. Because if you have, say, £10,000 and you get a 25% bonus, you've now got £12,500. If you have a 25% penalty on that, that's 25% off a bigger number because £12,500 is bigger than £10,000. And the net result is you're actually 6.25% down. So you would only withdraw £9,375.
53:41 Martin Lewis? Therefore, in the case of someone not needing a mortgage, their only choice if they want to keep the money is either get a mortgage, as Adrian suggested, or wait until age 60. If they just want to take the money out, they would pay a penalty on it. Now, that's not the most common scenario. The most common scenario and the biggest problem with the lifetime ISA is for those people who've been saving up to buy a home and then the home that they're buying costs a little bit over £450,000. And then even though they have done everything right, they've got a mortgage, they've saved up for a property using a lifetime ISA, they're first-time buyers, they still, if they want to take their money out, which they probably will because they've been using it as their place to save for first-time property, have to pay that 6.25% penalty. I hope that clears it up.
54:28 Martin Lewis? Hello now and welcome to the Pod Only Bit. I'm here with PPS podcast producer Simon. Hello, Simon. How are you doing?
54:35 Speaker 04 I am excellent.
54:36 Martin Lewis? I would like, because of my slight pun disease, I would just like a little bit of credit that we've been talking about being in the wrong band the whole time and I haven't mentioned Robbie, I haven't mentioned Gerry, I haven't mentioned Zane. I did not do that pun at any point. And I think I should be somewhat credited for my fantastic restraint over that.
55:00 Speaker 04 Admirable, yes.
55:01 Martin Lewis? Admirable. But we do have some more council tax questions and stuff to talk about, so we'll move away from the puns and get straight into them. I think there was one more we had left on council tax support.
55:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, a really interesting one actually from Daryl. "Any idea what's happening with people who were bumped over to universal credit from legacy benefits like ESA and then found the transitional protection didn't include council tax support? Mine went up 25%."
55:26 Martin Lewis? Yeah, this is a really interesting question. So for those who don't know, if you were on the old form of benefits like tax credits or others, you were moved over and income support and etc. You were moved over to universal credit and if you agreed to do it in the right way, then you got transitional protection, which said for a limited time your income would not drop. So you would get the same amount of income even if you're going to a new system where ultimately you would be getting less on universal credit. But there was an interaction of that with the way that council support works in some councils, remembering every council is doing this differently, both its eligibility criteria, what it counts as income and what it is paying out.
56:05 Martin Lewis? So what is likely to have happened here is that even though transitional protection meant that you got the same total income under the new system with universal credit as you did under the legacy benefit system, because what's likely to have happened is you then got a lower universal credit payment plus a top-up income in the form of a transitional payment, the council counts those incomes differently to the way it did before, when it would only count a certain amount of universal credit up. And without just going, it gets incredibly complicated, but basically that meant that the council said you didn't, weren't entitled to the same support. I mean, it's crackers, but that's just how it works. I don't know what to say.
56:47 Martin Lewis? I mean, these things, I think I've made my frustration with the council tax system pretty plain. I mean, again, the fact that council tax support is very so widely in every council and is a postcode lottery is another part of this broken system.
57:04 Martin Lewis? What else have we got, Simon?
57:06 Speaker 04 Well, so I think you said we're going to do five council tax savings, but we've only actually done three so far.
57:10 Martin Lewis? That's a very good point. I do have two left, don't worry, I was not getting my numbers wrong. So I'll just, these are the quick ones I'll add in now. We haven't had any questions on them because they tend not to be things that people know about. And from Freedom of Information request, the last one I did was in 2024 on this, local authorities across Britain were sitting on £140 million of overpaid council tax. Now, you're most likely to be able to claim if you've moved out of the council area since 1993, it goes back all that time, and you weren't paying by direct debit. Effectively, it means that- You're entitled to a refund back, but you never got your refund and there's £140 million of it. So the first option is check if your old counsel offers an easy online claim form. This is the best way.
57:55 Martin Lewis? Just do a search for counsel name, whatever your counsel name is, counsel tax refund firm. About half the time, this will take you to an online claims firm and a page explaining your counsel's process. If not, you can email your counsel or call them, but generally emails better. If you don't have enough details, if the form is off-puttingly long, you can try and check just to see. So again, if you moved out of your counsel area, so you moved to a different counsel area and you weren't paying by direct debit, and you moved sort of midway between your payment year, you may be owed some money back. And that's all you're looking to check and do. So that's a simple one. And then my final one, which is probably a cheat in my five ways to save on counsel tax.
58:36 Martin Lewis? It's just, it's that, we talked about this before, but it was worth putting in because I'm very pleased about it. English counsel tax is changing from next April. We've already mentioned the severe cognitive impairment change for SMI. The other big change is about the process on the counsel tax debt collection, which you will have heard, if you're regular listeners, me talk about many times before, as being the most aggressive, punitive, vicious and counterproductive form of mainstream debt collection. Councils are allowed to do things that no commercial company would be allowed to do, that would fail in the FCA's treatment of how consumers should be treated if a commercial lender were doing it. And we have managed to mitigate that somewhat.
59:20 Martin Lewis? This is a campaign I did with my Money and Mental Health Policy Institute charity. I did it first by meeting Angela Rayner, who I have to tell you, I have loads of these meetings and normally what you get from a politician is a nod and a smile. But what she said at the end is, yeah, we should sort that. And I thought, well, we'll see if you do. But then they put out a consultation pretty quickly and Steve Reid, her successor, has followed that up. So thanks to him as well for listening here. There's no party political point, just in cases as a podcast that's going out. I know we're in the middle of this, of this political turmoil with lots of different names being mentioned. I am staying strictly neutral. I'm just telling you a story of something that happened in the past. So anyway, those changes are now confirmed to come in from April 2027 and here is what's happening. Currently, if you miss your monthly payment on counsel tax.
1:00:05 Martin Lewis? Within just three weeks, you can be asked to pay for the entire year. As I've said before, no idea how people who miss a monthly payment are expected to be able to afford to pay for an entire year's payment. And within three weeks of that, the council could apply to court and send bailiffs in and add administrative costs on top. So the big changes here are, first of all, instead of three weeks, in which after three weeks they can change from a month to a year, they will have to wait 63 days, which is roughly the same amount of time as breathing space and debt collection. They should also be signposting you to where you can go and get money help. And hopefully that will give you a little bit of a time to go and talk, to get help and to sort out how to pay the council tax, so you don't progress to that bailiff stage.
1:00:49 Martin Lewis? And if you do go to the bailiff stage, there will be a limit on the extra costs that can be added on top of a hundred quid. Now, look, I need to be honest with you. I would have liked that delay to be a lot longer. I would have liked the hundred quid to be a lot shorter, but this is still a big improvement. Final note of a change that's going to be coming from next year in council tax, as we're talking all things council tax, is that currently the default on most councils in England anyway is asking for payments from April to January, 10 monthly payments, though you do have a right to ask for it to be done in 12 monthly payments. From April 2027 for new bills and for the following year for all bills, the default will be shifted to 12 monthly council tax payments. It won't change what you pay, it just changes how you pay, which makes more sense, 12 monthly.
1:01:33 Martin Lewis? But one of the things I lobbied on there is you should still have the right to be able to request the 10 monthly payments, stick on the current system, because I know some people like that because they say to me, yeah, but then I use those extra two months to pay for my car insurance. So it's a good way, it helps me budget. So you will still be able to do that. So those are, my final fifth way to save on council tax was a little bit of a cheat, but I wanted to talk to you all about it anyway. And I think that's probably enough. I think, Steinman, shall we stop there?
1:02:00 Speaker 04 Oh, you've nailed it.
1:02:01 Martin Lewis? Yeah, done.
1:02:05 Martin Lewis? So as we've just said, that is it for this week. We tend to put out a new episode every Thursday and Monday. The Monday one is the Question Time podcast, where you can ask me absolutely anything and everything, open brackets within reason, close brackets. If you've enjoyed today's pod, please subscribe. And why not tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast? After all, they might listen, they might realise they're in the wrong council tax band, they might get back six or seven grand. Surely then they owe you at least a drink. You never know. After all, think about the rewards and joy you could get from saving your friends money. And if you haven't enjoyed it, but for some reason you have been listening all this way through into the podcast, just...
1:03:06 Speaker 05 Martin Lewis is the founder of moneysavingexpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing [email protected] . The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review however you listen.
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