It isn't just with the older houses that this can happen. I live on a modern estate, less than 10 yearsold which is still being built. It has been found on several occasions through our local community association, that the same style of house in another street is on a different valuation band. In all the cases that have come to light the people living in the higher banding have gone to the council and negotiated a reduction and repayment of the overpayment.

I didn't know this either.

For those of you wondering about this - and in the current absence of a response to the preceding request - I've found out via Googling that you need to go to http://www.voa.gov.uk/council_tax/cti_home.htm

Feed in a postcode and the results appear - so for my village since I know all the postcodes I can find out all the council tax payments people are making.

1993 was the year it came in, we disputed ours then and went down one grade.
The councils had time limit to set the rates so they went around in a car, settings the rate by driving by. I printed my postcode off and gave them a friend who lives a few doors away, More than 60% of houses same as mine are in the next band.

Thanks for that information. I guess that its all based on property valuation? The house next door to me is one band below mine and all the others are at least two bands below. The only property with the same valuation is the farm across the road.

There is obvious concern that in attempting to reduce the banding, the powers that be may in fact increase it and that of neighbours too!

It is the Valuation Office Agency(Government agency, parent department is the Inland Revenue) that bands domestic properties and deals with appeals against those bands, not the local authorities, who send out the bills and collect the money.
Council tax bands are based on the capital value of a property on 1/4/91 and came into being on 1/4/93. There has been no revaluation since, a scheduled one having been cancelled
So your band is still based on what it should have sold for on 1/4/91, the evidence for this being houses that actually sold in the area at that time. Some mistakes were made but the bands were not just based on Valuation staff driving up and down, as a lot of people seem to think, they held floor plans and areas for nearly every property which could be referred to, as well as all the sales information for everything in the area.
Mistakes were made and this was usually because a property had plus or minus factors affecting the value that only a full inspection would have revealed, the short time scale and small number of staff from conception to implementation made individual inspections impossible.

One of my old bosses used to work as a survey for the LA. He did 'drive by' valuations before I worked for him (He's now an estate agent), so was forearmed when I went to get my council tax banding changed because I knew that only the beginning of my road had been looked at. These houses are ALL semis and ALL extended (2 storey extensions). Mine was the same basic size, had no extension and was (and is) a mid-terraced property. Got the banding put down one notch.

Now I am in a similar position to LittlebrookLyn, in that I want to get my mother's property re-valued, because although it is a 4 bed detached house (and the whole road are different), it used to have a large garden, by half of the garden was compulsory purchesed some years ago when they built an access tunnel underneath it for the port/harbour.

Do others on here think I stand a chance?

Both 2 and 3 seem to apply. Thank you for the link - More ammunition the better!

Yes 7 years ago ,I successfully challenged Bassetlaw Council in North Notts and was re-imbursed for overpayment back to 1994 when I purchased that property.The property was oved down one band.