Sutterton woman who is renovating a derelict manor house in Gedney Broadgate says she is being penalised after being hit with £1,000 a month council bill
A woman who is renovating a derelict historical building says she is being penalised after being hit with a nearly £1,000 a month council bill.
When Pippa Clare bought The Manor House, Gedney Broadgate, in July last year it was infested with pigeons and had a leaking roof but now it is slowly being transformed into a home.
But she is angry after receiving a council bill for £987.99 a month. Previously, she had been paying £197 a month but received an email last week stating that as the property has been empty for more than two years, the council is imposing a long-term empty premium charge.
The Manor House is reported to have been empty since 2008.
The council says it had applied a 25% discount for 12 months to help Miss Clare make changes.
Miss Clare (51), who is living in Sutterton, said: “I have been penalised. They are charging me for someone else leaving it empty. That was nothing to do with me.
“I have local people stopping all the time to say that the Manor House has not looked as good as this for 50 years.”
Miss Clare says she began paying council tax in February when the building became weather tight.
At the start of the financial year, she received a bill for £197 a month which she had been paying but two weeks ago received notification that she was being charged the premium.
Miss Clare said: “They gave me no warning. I was not aware of this at all. You would think that they would charge you from when you bought the property.
“They are making me move into a house with no facilities as I don’t have any other option.”
The council says the long term empty premium is an incentive to bring empty homes or second homes into use and that there are 107 dwellings in the area subject to this charge.
A council statement said: “Under national guidelines, once a dwelling has been empty for two years or more a Long Term Empty Premium applies. For longer than two years this will be 200% of the usual council tax bill, for longer than five years this increases to 300% and for longer than ten years this will be 400%.
“For any properties that are undergoing major repair work or structural alterations the council is able to provide a 25% discount to the usual council tax rate for a period of 12 months, which the council did apply in this instance to help give the
resident time to make changes to the property.
“The application and duration of this discount was communicated to the owner when the property was purchased in July 2019, as well as details of what the charges on the property would be thereafter. The council tax team are still in regular communication with the owner.”