00:00This shop in Rochester is gearing up for the festive season, but its upstairs isn't quite
00:05so sparkly. Owners Keir Kemp and Jen Dreyer moved their saw shop into this vacant 17th
00:11century building in Rochester back in May.
00:14Keir and Jen spent three months renovating the downstairs to look how it does today,
00:21but upstairs is quite the contrast. Let's go take a look.
00:24The couple are in a dispute with Medway Council, who are charging them a 300% council tax premium
00:31on the building.
00:32The attraction of the building was to take a beautiful Grade 1 listed building and kind
00:37of slowly bring it back to life, but I guess our argument is that them slapping this extra
00:44council tax is just taking money away from what we could spend on renovating the building.
00:49Councils are entitled to charge a discretionary fee of 200% on properties which have been
00:54unoccupied or substantially unfurnished for at least a year, meaning the couple's council
01:00tax is now about £5,000 a year, rather than £2,000.
01:04This place that we're standing now, I don't think anyone's been in here since at least
01:08the early 2000s, maybe the 90s, because it's like crumbling. It's not inhabitable. Like,
01:15a human couldn't live there because it doesn't have water and it doesn't have heating.
01:19Keir and Jen asked the council for a one-year exception from this extra fee to help them to carry
01:24out repair work to the upstairs, which the council has refused.
01:28In a statement, Medway Council said premiums are discretionary and councils can choose whether
01:33or not to adopt them, but they can't decide to pick and choose which properties the premium
01:37would apply to. They said that the discretionary element is whether they choose to charge the
01:43premium and this can only be altered prior to the start of a financial year.
01:48Now, in a latest attempt to change the council's minds, Keir has put the flat up for rent.
01:54It's a way of raising awareness because I think it's hypocritical for us to on one hand
01:59be like, we're saving the high street, on the other hand slap a small business with loads
02:03of extra council tax bills, taking money away from a renovation that we want to do to bring
02:09a beautiful building back to life and allow it to serve the community again.
02:13And Keir says the couple have big plans for the shop's future.
02:17We've got plans to make that into what we're calling a sorcery, which is think of it like
02:22a tap room, but for condiments. That's the plan. So, you know, we've got like a lot of plans
02:28to bring interesting stuff into the community and hopefully like grow the business within
02:36like the Rochester area, but we're being held back.
02:38For now, Keir says the sorcery will have to wait until discussions with the council begin
02:44to flow.
02:45Sophie Denny for KMTV in Rochester.
