A Moray couple is celebrating a £4,000 council tax refund after a 10-year war over the value of their home threatened to end up in court.
Peter and Tracey Craigmile moved into their three-bedroom bungalow in 2015 after downsizing from a historic five-bedroom property, which even still retained old bells that would have been used to ring for servants.
However, much to the couple’s shock, they found they faced their council tax bill rising by several hundred pounds due to their new house being rated Band F, instead of the Band D they had previously rented.
Their feeling of injustice only strengthened when they discovered every other property on their new street was rated Band E.
The anger sparked a 10-year fight with Moray Council and the Grampian Assessor to have their home reclassified.
Now, after a decade-long campaign, the couple has secured a 30-year payout backdated to 1995, meaning the previous occupant is celebrating a refund of several thousand pounds too.
These are the 6 steps Mr Craigmile took to secure the council tax refund from Moray Council for himself and the previous owner of the property.
Step 1: Speaking to the previous occupant
Paramedic Mr Craigmile and his wife Tracey bought the three-bedroom bungalow in Rothiemay, near Huntly, after deciding their previous rented five-bedroom home was too big for them.
With a big double garage to embrace their passion for motorbikes, the couple was delighted.
However, they got a big surprise when their first council tax bill landed with the property rated Band F, which had an annual charge of £1,639.
The difference was £300 more than the rest of the homes on the street at the time, which equates to around £500 today.
Confused, Mr Craigmile called the previous owner.
He said: “I looked at the other houses on the street. They were all reasonably similar, but they were all Band E.
“So I called the previous owner, whose husband actually built the house in 1995, and asked ‘How come it’s Band F?’
“She said she didn’t know but had just been paying it and said she remembered it was something to do with them having PVC windows installed.
“Is that enough for it to be Band F? Can’t be.”
Step 2: Asking for an inspection
Within weeks Mr Craigmile had called Moray Council asking for his home to be inspected.
It was a move that would prove crucial in the years to come as any claims to have properties reassessed must be made within six months of moving in.
Despite being hopeful the visit would make officialdom see common sense, it didn’t pan out the way he had hoped.
He said: “The council assessor came out, got out of his car, but never actually crossed the threshold of my property. He never even set foot on the driveway.
“He just looked at the house and said, ‘You’ve got a big garage.’
“I told him we didn’t actually live in the garage and he just replied, ‘It’s a big house, I’m retiring in two weeks.’
“Before I knew it he was driving off again.”
Step 3: Maintaining the pressure
After such a brief visit, it was perhaps unsurprising that Mr and Mrs Craigmile didn’t get good news about a rebate.
So instead, he turned his attention to the Grampian Assessor’s office, asking for someone to come out and examine the property.
Years of e-mails and phone calls came and went with no result.
Then, in 2023 Mr Craigmile decided to up the ante.
He said: “I got to the point where I said ‘That’s it, if nobody is going to come out and look at it, then I’ll just do something about it myself.’
“So I decided to just pay the reduced rate in protest.
“It got right to the end of the year, and I got a phone call from them asking me for the full amount.
“They said that if I paid the outstanding balance, then it wouldn’t be recorded as a default, so I paid it in the end.”
Step 5: Threatening legal action
Although he was beaten on that occasion, Mr Craigmile was not about to give up the fight.
He decided to take court action, arguing his property had been incorrectly assessed.
An appeal to an initial court was dismissed.
An appeal to a higher court was dismissed.
Then, finally, progress. The Upper Tier of the Appeal Court of Scotland agreed to a hearing to discuss the case and even set a date.
And after years of trying and failing to get an assessor to visit his home, suddenly the assessors were very keen to visit Mr Craigmile.
He said: “The hearing was set for January and they came out in December, it was the first time somebody had visited me since the first time in August 2015.
“This time they had lasers doing all the measurements, they went round the whole house, measured the size of the garden, looked at the other houses on the street.
“It was all very thorough. Not like the first visit at all.”
Step 6: Getting a result
There was a risk with all of this, though.
If the assessor had ruled that Mr and Mrs Craigmile’s bungalow had been correctly graded Band F, and it was all the other homes in the street that were wrong, he would have landed his neighbours with larger bills instead.
Mr Craigmile joked: “I certainly wouldn’t have been very popular.”
However, within weeks, the former pipe major of Elgin and District Pipe Band got the news he had been waiting nearly 10 years for.
An e-mail landed in his inbox informing him he would receive a refund totalling £3984.12, later increased by a further £81.91 after he challenged a deduction for debt collectors.
Mr Craigmile added: “My wife used to say ‘I don’t know why you bother’, but everyone needs a hobby.
“I know it has happened to other people, too. It’s whether you are prepared to keep up the fight.
“When I spoke to the council staff about getting the refund they said I was the first person they’d heard of who had challenged it successfully.
“This time the underdog won.”
Could you also be eligible for a huge council tax refund?
Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis estimates hundreds of thousands of homes across the UK are in the wrong council tax band.
The guru believes a rushed job when properties were valued in 1991 has had repercussions lasting decades.
Mr Craigmile has praised the advice on the expert’s website for helping him land the Moray Council tax refund.
He said: “I love my motorbikes, so my wife has done her theory test and we’ve used the money to buy her a nice Ducati.
“We’re also going to finally get the garden sorted so we can enjoy it properly.”
A Moray Council spokeswoman said: “Any homeowner with a query about the valuation band of their property can contact the Grampian Assessor, where any appeal to a band’s valuation can be made.
“Moray Council cannot change the band of a property, the Assessor is responsible for the preparation and maintenance of the Council Tax Valuation List.
“In this case, the band was appealed and changed through the Assessor, who notified us of the error in valuation, resulting in our issuing a rebate as standard where this has occurred.”
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