Can I be charged council tax as a student after graduation? Responsible for entire house?

This is unfortunately how council tax works in situations like yours. When a property has a mix of students and non-students, the non-students become liable for the council tax. Since you graduated, you lost your student status, which made you the liable person for the property. The good news is you may be eligible for a discount. If you were the only non-student in a property, you should qualify for the 25% single person discount (even though others lived there, they're "disregarded" for council tax purposes as students). You can also request an empty property discount for the period after you physically moved out if no one was living there. The most important thing is to contact the council directly with evidence of when you moved out and explain your situation. Bring proof of your new address (job contract, bills, etc.) and the exact date you left the property. They may be willing to adjust the charges based on your actual occupancy.

After dealing with almost the exact same situation last year, I found an amazing tool that helped me resolve it - https://taxr.ai actually has a council tax analyzer that specializes in student transitions. I uploaded my tenancy agreement, student status confirmation and graduation date, and it generated a detailed report showing exactly what period I was liable for and how much discount I was entitled to. The best part was that it automatically identified the correct exemptions I qualified for that the council hadn't applied. It even generates a formal letter you can send to the council citing the specific regulations. My bill went from £890 to £215 after I submitted their findings!

Just wanted to update everyone - I tried the taxr.ai tool that was mentioned and it was seriously helpful! My situation was almost identical (graduated in June, contract until September). The report showed I was eligible for both the single person discount AND partial empty property relief. The tool generated a letter citing specific council tax regulations that I sent to my local council. They initially pushed back but when I mentioned the specific legislation codes from the report, they suddenly became much more cooperative. Ended up reducing my bill by over 60%! Definitely worth trying if you're in this situation.

After working through a similar issue, I found that calling the council directly can be a nightmare. I spent weeks trying to get through to someone who could actually help with my post-graduation council tax bill. If you're struggling to reach anyone at the council who can help, check out https://claimyr.com - they have a service that gets you through to an actual human at the council quickly. Also worth watching their demo video at https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c to see how it works. The service basically waits on hold for you and then calls you when they have an actual council representative on the line. Saved me literally hours of waiting and getting bounced between departments. I finally got someone who understood student housing situations and could properly apply the discounts I was entitled to.

I need to apologize for my skeptical comment earlier. I actually tried the Claimyr service out of desperation after spending an entire afternoon on hold with my local council. It genuinely worked! Got connected to a council tax specialist in about 30 minutes without having to listen to that awful hold music. The person I spoke with immediately understood my situation (also a former student with lingering tenancy) and applied both the single occupancy discount and partial exemption for the period after I moved out. Saved me nearly £600 and a ton of stress. Sometimes it's worth paying for convenience when dealing with bureaucracy.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that it might be worth checking if your university provides any support with council tax issues for recent graduates. Mine had a dedicated housing advisor who helped me draft a formal letter to the council explaining my situation. Also, if your name was the only one on the tenancy agreement (and your housemates were basically subletting from you), that's unfortunately why you're fully liable. But if you were all named on the agreement, you might have a case to argue that the liability should be shared or reassessed based on who was actually occupying the property at the time.

Just a quick note on timing - don't wait too long to challenge this! Council tax demands typically have a 28-day appeal window. If you've already missed that, don't panic, but you should act ASAP. When I had a similar issue, I initially ignored the letters (they were going to my old address too), and by the time I dealt with it, they had already sent it to a collection agency which made everything 10x more complicated. Even a simple email or phone call saying "I'm disputing this and will provide evidence" can stop the escalation process.

I went through something very similar last year and the key thing that helped me was getting documentation sorted quickly. Since you mentioned you had individual room agreements rather than a joint tenancy, that's actually really important - it means you should only be liable for council tax proportional to your room, not the entire property. Here's what I'd recommend doing immediately: 1) Contact the council in writing (email is fine) stating you're formally disputing the charge and requesting a breakdown of how they calculated the full property liability when you only rented one room, 2) Gather evidence of your move-out date (job contract, utility bills at new address, anything showing when you actually left), and 3) Request they apply the single person discount for any period where you were the only non-student. The fact that they've been sending notices to your old address when they knew you'd moved is also worth challenging - councils have a duty to use your current address for official correspondence. Don't let them intimidate you with the large amount - individual room liability in a 6-bed house should be significantly less than £1,350!