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Living on site in a caravan: rubbish and recycling disposal


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We're about to commence living in a caravan for our build. I'm assuming that until we're complete and paying council tax I can't expect the council to uplift any rubbish and recycling (thinking day to day rubbish/recycling, not construction waste). For those of you in a similar position, is this correct and if so what did you do?

 

A scan of the council website leaves me none the wiser.

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Ours was different in that we demolished then re built. Frankly the bin men around here are great, they take all sorts and took all my domestic waste whilst living in the caravan, (but I didn’t pay council tax as I told them it was fir builders “facilities” and my wife was paying council tax and living in our other house whilst I was working away) Try just putting it out and see if they take it, I doubt they have a list of addresses to collect from!   If you are “all” living there you should pay council tax at band a.

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@joe90 thanks for that. I think they'll only pick up wheelie bins around here. The council don't seem enthusiastic about us paying council tax when I asked, and while I'm not going to voluntarily pay a lot of money, neither do I feel we should be taking advantage of rubbish collection without paying for it. How did you go about arranging it?

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3 minutes ago, Russell griffiths said:

I am finding a ten pound note in a ziplock bag on top of the bins gets them taken away more than I need, [...]

 

Similarly, a quick chat with 'the boys'  most Monday mornings, a smile and Christmas bottle works a treat.

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In our area you just ring the refuse dept and ask for bins and they drop some off.  Doesn't seem to tie in to council tax registration as we had them before and so did our neighbours doing a barn conversion further up the lane (they were living in a caravan)

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1 hour ago, jamieled said:

@joe90 thanks for that. I think they'll only pick up wheelie bins around here. The council don't seem enthusiastic about us paying council tax when I asked, and while I'm not going to voluntarily pay a lot of money, neither do I feel we should be taking advantage of rubbish collection without paying for it. How did you go about arranging it?

 

Youre  lucky if they are not chasing you fir council tax!!!, as above, ring up and ask for a bin. Around here they don’t use bins, just plastic sacks (lots of people round here use chicken/horse/dog food bags). Frankly ours will take anything as long as it’s some sort of bag.

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We paid Band A council tax as soon as we moved into the caravan. The bin men empty our bins just like everyone elses.

 

I told the story of the council tax sniooper. I believe he had visited the site every month to see if there was any sign of anyone living in the caravan.  When we eventually did move in and I phoned to tell them, he said "let me get the file, yes I have a picture of your caravan, and I have visited the site, let me see, 17 times so far"

 

You would not get away with it here for long living in it without paying council tax.

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When we moved out of our house to, let it and live in our motorhome and travel, we needed a postal address. We stuck a post box on the wall outside my mother's house (no 15) and called it 15A. Neighbours reported us as we parked for a few weeks in mother's drive and the council official came round to check. He inspected mother's house and found no one living in it other than her and so she kept her single occupancy rate. He never checked whether the fictitious 15A was paying any council tax! 

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We just phoned up and asked for wheelie bins. The woman did mention council tax but as it was a touring caravan no council tax was due. I was already paying 2 lots elsewhere at the time but the woman was keen to point out that it wasn’t to Borders Council. Nevertheless she sent 2 wheelie bins and asked that we didn’t use the service for build rubbish. 

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 Very unpredictable.

 

When a house was demolished near here to make a road into a new estate, they continued collecting the bins ...used by a neighbour who was stretched .. for a coupe of months. They had also been used for the previous number of months when it was empty.

 

F

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19 hours ago, jamieled said:

The council don't seem enthusiastic about us paying council tax when I asked...

 

 

That is odd because we have the same Council and when I volunteered to get the plot & static caravan registered for council tax they were happy to proceed. The initial address allocated came from the building control department which had an address error replicated on the tax bill, perhaps in your case you have not submitted diagrams to building control? In the first instance your property will have to be valued by another department before the bill arrives, Band A in our case.

 

My main motivation for paying tax was for bin collection and on the first collection day I stood by the bin as the refuse team picked them up and explained the new address, "no worries mate, we just pick up any bins left out".

Edited by epsilonGreedy
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 04/06/2019 at 13:11, Russell griffiths said:

I am finding a ten pound note in a ziplock bag on top of the bins gets them taken away more than I need, I’m sure the nosey neighbour wonders why I leave my bins out permanently. ??

Yep - binmen have their own businesses too - issuing bins they can find to people and emptying them 2 or 3 times a week for £5 a go. 

 

When we got our first commercial property I was totally unaware how it all worked. We didn't pay rates as it was small business exempt and the only thing we paid for was water and sewage, there was a big black council bin outside in our parking area and we just put rubbish in it. It got collected 3 times a week for about 3 years until we were in conversation with another business who said we should move away from the council as they had just got a great deal with Biffa. I sort of looked at them perplexed and said I would look into it. It then dawned on me that we didn't have a waste collection contract at all and as we were thinking of it like council tax for a house it didn't even cross my mind that it was a paid for service in the commercial world.

 

Binmen just saw the bin, assumed it was paid for and emptied it! 

Edited by Carrerahill
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