BBC News, Shrewsbury
BBCA woman unable to move into her new home during repairs received a bill for £3,000 in extra council tax because the local authority deemed her a second home owner.
Jessica Rose from Shrewsbury received a bill totalling £6,603.20 – Band F tax plus a 100% second home premium – despite only owning one property.
“The whole thing felt like a little bit of a stitch-up, and quite malicious”, she said.
A spokesperson for Shropshire Council, which has since removed most of the extra charge, said the second home premium was “charged for any period that the property is not occupied as a main residence”.
Miss Rose picked up the keys to her new home in the Greenfields area in April – but she could not move in as it had no hot water or heating.
She lived with her parents in Wolverhampton for a few weeks while works were completed, during which time the bill arrived.
Since April, second home owners in Shropshire have had to pay double the usual council tax.
Miss Rose said she had let the authority know that she would not be moving in fully until the hot water and heating were fixed.
“At no point, in any emails or when I filled in online forms, did I say I was a second home owner,” she said, adding that she had “just tried to be open and honest about what my living situation was.”
“It just opened the floodgates.”
Miss Rose said she felt like “it’s up to me to prove to them I don’t have a second home.”
Miss Rose, a former journalist, is now a self-employed artist who specialises in lino-cut illustrations.
Her income is not stable, fluctuating between £6,000 and £24,000 each year – which she said made the second home premium on her council tax unaffordable.
“If I’m very lucky, I’ll sell a painting here and there – I’m just not the right person to go after,” she said.
“I don’t have a string of lovely cottages in Wales or anything like that.”
Shropshire Council has reduced the bill now the repairs are complete.
However, it has told her an extra payment of £118.57 remains due in for a two-week period in May.
The council stated the house was furnished during this time, meaning it qualified for the second home tax – something Miss Rose said was “totally irrelevant.”
“You could have one chair, you could have four chairs – I really don’t know at what point a house becomes ‘furnished’,” she said.
“I found it quite offensive to be put in this second home owner bracket and quizzed on how many sticks of furniture I’ve got.”
A spokesperson for Shropshire Council said “the classification of a second residence is a furnished property that is not a person’s place of residence.
“While there is an exception for property in need of or undergoing major repair to make it habitable, this exception does not apply to substantially furnished dwellings.”
