Richard's Good News Story of the Week concerns Council Tax and a change with the Valuation Office Agency.
"Ms M got in touch with an uncommon bit of casework recently. It all related to a council and then the Valuation Office Agency (VOA).
Ms M owns and rents out a property in another part of the country as a ‘serviced accommodation’ business. However, the council where the property is located wrongly decided to classify it as a second home, charging it double council tax rather than business rates, causing all sorts of problems.
Despite raising this with the council in question multiple times, Ms M was hitting a brick wall and was eventually told that the system “says no” and she would need to have the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) reclassify the property and fix it instead. Then the only problem was the lack of response and action from the VOA!
As it’s a government agency and she has been waiting months for a response, Ms M got in touch with me to see if I could help move things along, so I contacted the VOA to highlight this error. Within weeks Ms M confirms they’ve finally sorted the issue that had been keeping her up at night and the property is now properly under the business rates scheme.
Problems like Ms M’s – where a public body just isn’t responding in a reasonable timeframe – are so common for many people, yet they do not know where to turn.
As your MP, while I cannot fix every issue that comes to me, I can try, and I have a good success record with issues stuck in the system. I can’t promise the outcome you’re after but I will always do my best.
So, if you or anybody else you know, needs some help to get things moving, then please get in touch through my website here: https://www.richardholden.org.uk/contact."
