Beach hut owners consider legal action over bid to up council tax
Enraged beach hut owners have threatened legal action after their local authority decided to class their cabins as second homes and charge them full council tax. The huts in Mudeford Spit fell into the sights of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council as they scramble to fund local services. And even though they have no toilets, mains electricity, and can only be slept in for half the year, the district council now intends to class them as holiday homes. The cabins, worth around half a million each, are currently entitled to a 50 per cent council tax discount, but this will be scrapped in April.Now, under the BCP council's new rules, the beach huts will be placed into band A, which will see well-heeled owners hand over £1,503 a year in tax. The owners, who are facing rent and tax bills of around £5,000 a month, claim they are being milked by a cash-strapped council which has run out of money.Meanwhile, the Mudeford Sandbank Beach Hut Association say it will seek legal advice over the plans to reclassify the huts as second homes. Chairman Darren Pidwell said: 'We are considering the legal basis for the application of council tax on what is a wooden shed with no mains connections or individual toilet facilities. The huts will now be categorised as second homes and so lose their council tax discount From April, 344 beach huts on the idyllic stretch of Dorset coastline will be classified as second homes and no longer be eligible for the reductionStephen Bath, who owns a beach hut, said most of the 344 were not rich people but had inherited the cabins over generations and dubbed the move 'despicable'. When his family first purchased their beach hut in the early 1980s, it cost just £3,000. 'The council believes that because you own a beach hut at Mudeford you are automatically rich but the truth is the majority of hut owners aren't,' he said.'They have huts that have been in the family for generations. Yet the council thinks they can milk us all because of it. It is pretty despicable.'Officials say the council tax bill will be 'relatively small' compared to the value of the huts which can sell for between £400,000 and £575,000.From April, 344 beach huts on the idyllic stretch of Dorset coastline will be classified as second homes and no longer be eligible for the reduction.Some 231 of these are owned by people living outside of the local authority area.Bills will leap up to £1,503 per year - an increase of more than £60 per month - as the council tries to raise an additional £211,000 for stretched local services.The hike in council tax will be in addition to the rent bills owners already pay to BCP Council for the land their huts are on. Owners of some of Britain's most exclusive beach huts, including this one on Mudeford Spit in Christchurch, Dorset, will now have to pay full council taxThe beach huts, which can be stayed in overnight for part of the year, measure just 13ft by 16ft but can fetch more than a four-bedroom home in some parts of the country.With price tags up to £575,000, the value of these huts also eclipses the area's average house value of £313,000.One hut owner, who asked not to be named, insisted that beach hut owners were not all 'wealthy NIMBYS' 'The council see us as cash cows and just take, take, take but we get nothing back in return,' they said. 'The communal toilets at Mudeford haven't been properly refurbished in decades.'This will impact a lot of people who will not be able to afford to keep their hut and have to sell up which is really sad because they have been in the family for years.'Meanwhile Mr Pidwell said the community was 'very disappointed' by the council's move to 'target' beach hut owners. 'There has been next to no investment in facilities in the recent past and these are now desperately needed,' he said. 'It feels like this is all take and no give.' This hut was sold for £430,000 last year after the owners bought it for £60,000 in 1997'The Mudeford huts alone will now generate over £1.8m of revenue to BCP Council and we would ask they at least invest some of these funds back into the beach for the benefit of all owners and visitors alike.'The council's decision tears up the arrangement it inherited from past Bournemouth and Christchurch councils.BCP, like many councils, is struggling to make ends meet and must search for new sources of income to keep services afloat.A spokesperson for BCP Council said that out of the 344 huts at Mudeford 231 are owned by people from outside the area.Mike Cox, cabinet member for finance said: 'The council must use all levers at its disposal to raise funds to protect essential services important to our residents.'Beach huts on Mudeford Spit often sell for between £400,000 and £575,000 - more than the £313,000 average price of a home in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.'I understand their pain. It is a significant increase in terms of the percentage, but it's a relatively small amount of money in terms of the value of the property they're sitting on.'
