Watford Borough Council

The amount of council tax you are charged depends on the valuation band of your property and the number of people living in your property, aged 18 or over.

When we calculate your council tax, a full charge is raised if there are at least two people aged 18 or over living in the property.

Single person discount

If only one person, aged 18 or over, lives in your property, you are entitled to a single person discount of 25% of the full charge.

Other discounts

Some people are disregarded for council tax purposes. This means that we will not count them when we decide how many people, aged 18 or over, live in your property, such as:

• Full time students, student nurses, apprentices or  youth trainees (a 'student discount certificate form' can be downloaded, see below)
• Non British spouses of students
• Persons who have reached 18 but in respect of whom child benefit is still payable
• 18 and 19 year olds who are at or have just left school
• Persons in residential care homes in England and Wales
• Foreign language assistants
• The severely mentally impaired (a 'severely mentally impaired discount form' can be dowloaded, see below)
• Carers
• Prisoners
• Members of religious communities (essentially monks and nuns)
• Members (and dependants) of International Headquarters and Defence Organisations
• Members and dependants of visiting forces
• Diplomats 

Patients resident in hospitals and those people resident for the time being in hostels for the homeless or night shelters are also classified under discount disregards.

We can reduce your bill by 25% or 50%, depending on how many people we count. If we count only one person as living in your property we can give you a discount of 25%.

If we count nobody as living in your property we can give you a discount 50% (there is a 100% discount for the first six months) providing it is substantially unfurnished. Long term empty furnished properties are granted a discount of 50%. However long term empty unfurnished properties receive no discount after the initial 6 months exemption.