NEARLY 500 homeowners in Carlisle have had their council tax bills changed after finding that the government’s council tax snoopers had put their homes in the wrong tax band, figures released today show.

Of those 378 had their bills reduced because council tax inspectors had put them in a band that was too high.

And 106 had to be moved up after they were put in a band lower than they should have been.

John Stevenson, Carlisle’s Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate,  released the figures after Ministers were forced to publish the minutes of the Valuation Office Agency’s Council Tax Revaluation Programme Board.

He says there are serious and systematic errors in the banding of homes, which Ministers have been covering up to save money.

He says they show that while the Government is aware of the mistakes it is only when individual homeowners challenge their council tax banding that they can win a reduction in their bills.

John, who is confident of winning Carlisle for the Conservatives at the next General Election, says that Ministers are deliberately covering up the problems because the Government would have to pay tax refunds if the tax errors became known.

“We now have clear evidence of a council tax cover-up,” he says. “The Labour Government has been caught red-handed fiddling council tax to make families in Carlisleand across the country pay more.

“Whitehall bureaucrats know that many homes across the country are wrongly banded, but have refused to correct the tax inspectors’ errors to save the Government money and save face.

“The whole basis of our tax system is undermined if the state conspires to over-charge the public.”

Official papers from Gordon Brown’s council tax inspectors, the Valuation Office Agency, have admitted that many families have been paying over the odds for years because their homes are in the wrong band for council tax.

Secret comments contained in Valuation Office Agency minutes show that although a council tax revaluation exercise identified that some homeowners were paying over the odds (so-called ‘consequentials’) because their properties had been wrongly banded, Ministers covered up this information because of the implications: having to pay refunds and lose money and the subsequent bad press coverage.

The figures show that across England nearly 190,000 home owners in the past three years have proved that they have been paying the wrong council tax.

A total of 133,985 have had their bills cut after appealing against the bands their homes were put in. And 52,728 have had them increased after it was found they were paying too little

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