Bracknell Forest Council Tax charged ranked among UK councils

That was the claim from Bracknell Forest Council’s finance boss Peter Heydon after the authority announced a 3.49 per cent council tax hike for the coming year.

The increase will help pay for Bracknell Forest Council’s frontline services, such as caring for vulnerable residents, bin collections, maintaining parks and open spaces and more.

But is Cllr Heydon’s statement correct? Does Bracknell Forest have ‘one of the lowest council tax charges amongst all unitary authorities’?

READ MORE: 3.49 council tax increase announced for Bracknell Forest

How is council tax calculated?

Before we dive into the data, it is important to understand how council tax charges are decided.

Essentially -- council tax valuations are based on the value of residential properties (using house price data from 1991).

Properties are divided into eight bands (Band A to Band H) depending on their value.

File photo dated 11/06/13 of a council tax bill as Citizens Advice Scotland has revealed that Scots owe millions of pounds in council tax, according to figures from a charity. CAS has revealed 3,399 people sought its help over council tax debts averaging

Band A properties were valued at up to £40,000, Band D properties were valued from £68,001 to £88,000, and Band H properties were valued at more than £320,000.

Therefore, residents living in the least expensive Band A properties will pay the least amount of council tax, residents living in Band D properties tend to pay a medium amount and those in Band H homes pay the most.

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So does Bracknell Forest have a low council tax charge?

Property website propertydata.co.uk has a list showing the average band D council tax charge in almost 400 local authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales.

It’s important to note, however, that not all the councils listed on the site are ‘unitary’ authorities (the two-tier Oxfordshire authorities are included in the data, for example).

Without being able to identify which authorities are unitary and which are not, the data shows Bracknell Forest has the 49th lowest Band D council tax charge from the 393 councils listed.

According to Property Data, this was the lower end of an ‘average’ council tax charge.

Figures for 2020/2021 indicate residents in Band D properties paid an average of £1,356.

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Councils that charged Band D households less than £1,350 per year in 2020/2021 were considered to have a ‘low’ council tax charge.

According to government data, the average Band D council tax set by local authorities in England for 2020-21 was £1,818.

What else does the data show?

When compared with other Berkshire local authorities, Bracknell Forest had the second-lowest council tax charge from the six councils in the county in 2020/2021.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead had a ‘low’ charge of £1,077 (the third-lowest from the 393 councils listed by Property Data).

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Slough, Wokingham and West Berkshire all had more expensive Band D charges than Bracknell Forest.

But Reading led the way in 2020/2021 with a Band D charge of £1,692.

Will Bracknell Forest have one of the lowest council tax increases in the country?

This is harder to determine, namely because several local authorities have still not set their council tax increases for 2021/2022.

However, in Berkshire, Reading Borough Council has announced a council tax hike of 4.99 per cent for 2021/2022, choosing to add a three per cent top-up to pay for social care on top of the two per cent councils are legally allowed to set.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has also announced a 4.99 per cent increase.

Bucks residents will have to pay more council tax next year

Bracknell Forest Council has chosen to add half the three per cent top-up, hence the 3.49 per cent increase.

This means Band D taxpayers will pay an extra 91p per week from the next financial year, which starts April 1 2021.

West Berkshire, meanwhile, has chosen not to add the three per cent top-up, charging residents an extra 1.99 per cent in 2021/2022.