Council Tax Roulette: Spin the Wheel, Get a Bill
Why are Portsmouth landlords being billed thousands for empty properties that aren't empty? Because, as ever, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
At Portsmouth City Council (PCC), departments operate in silos—apparently to "protect residents" and comply with GDPR. But in practice, this means thousands of pounds wasted and countless hours spent resolving errors that never needed to happen. From housing to education, members see the same disconnect across every department. The result? A trail of paper, phone calls, frustration—and very little joined-up thinking.
Straight From Our Mailbox
We were copied on this email from an unhappy landlord to PCC this month:
Dear whoever is unlucky enough to be dealing with this fiasco....
It is impossible to express politely the total anger and frustration that I feel regarding two letters that I have received from Portsmouth City Council: The first advising me that a property I have owned and let to either students or young professional sharers for the last 20 years has been EMPTY FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS and therefore is subject to DOUBLE COUNCIL TAX. And the second letter a bill for £10,348.90 (TEN THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT POUNDS AND NINETY PENCE).
For many years I have paid the Council Tax monthly by direct debit as we have found that the Council billing system cannot cope with changes of tenants and billing the correct amounts monthly that sharers can pay equally. We have no arrears.
The house which has 4 sharers is registered with the COUNCIL under the HMO additional licencing process. This happened in 2011 and again at the end of 2023 when I completed the 84 page application and provided all of the many, many documents to back it up and paid the £900 fee.
The COUNCIL pest control people have visited in the last year to deal with the mice that the non-existent tenants are having problems with.
The COUNCIL tree people have been out to deal with the tree that is blocking the light to the front bedroom that the non-existent tenant is having problems
AND one of the tenants now has a car so he has a parking permit provided by, guess who?? THE COUNCIL!!!!!
AND the COUNCIL refuse collection people pick up rubbish/recycling every week that the EMPTY PROPERTY generates all on its own!!!
Another thing that I have found is that YOU COUNCIL TAX PEOPLE HAVE ACTUALLY SENT ONE OF THE TENANTS A BILL AT THIS ADDRESS FOR HIS PREVIOUS ADDRESS!! LEFT HAND/RIGHT HAND ??
I DESPAIR...
The first letter also contained a questionnaire asking if I had sold the property and when or if there were tenants in it. It is unbelievable that an incompetent group of people somewhere in the Council Offices thought that it was acceptable to issue a bill for TEN THOUSAND POUNDS BEFORE bothering to fact check.
I look forward to a quick resolution and apology for this error
The System Is Not Designed To Cope
Firstly, and sadly, PCC never appears to put themselves into the residents shoes – whether it be the 84 page HMO licence application, the failure to load info automatically from the last application on renewals or the vast number of printed council tax bills a student landlord receives before arriving at a final correct bill – everywhere you look, it is paper intensive and simple tasks often take 3 or 4 iterations before they are resolved.
Landlords of HMOs routinely receive several conflicting council tax bills before a correct one emerges—each requiring intervention, paperwork, and weeks of delay. PCC may assume these are "non-standard" households, but this small group generates a disproportionate administrative burden. Streamlining communication and embracing digital reform could save time, money, and sanity—for everyone involved.
In fact, it used to work better. A student house would get a single "£0" bill assuming exemption. Then PCC started guessing two-month occupancy gaps. Now, Council Tax is levied from the moment the last student finishes until the first one starts, with landlords having to prove otherwise. It's an expensive game of assumptions followed by corrections—played out in paper.
In An Ideal World
Portsmouth could tap into technology that's already mainstream. Imagine an AI assistant for each household—a silent, all-seeing admin that cross-references what Housing, Waste, and Council Tax all know about a property. If one department says it's occupied and another claims it's empty, the assistant flags the contradiction before anything is billed or sent.
Now give landlords access to a "portfolio assistant" of their own—a dashboard view where every property is synced and accurate. No more contradictory bills. No more costly mistakes. No need to overhaul PCC's structure—just a smart layer that brings coherence to what they already know.
Yes, it's optimistic. But compared to the £10,000 chaos we're seeing now, it sounds remarkably sane.