Most of us will now have received our council tax bills for 2021-22, and some people may have noticed that the Shadwell Parish Council precept line is showing a 1.7% increase compared to 2020-21.
The Parish Council would like to reassure residents that this is NOT because the total we have asked for (our “precept”) has gone up. The amount we will receive from council taxes collected by Leeds City Council will be £39,000, exactly the same as it was in 2020-21.
The amount of council tax we pay depends not just on the amount of our precept, but also on the “council tax base” that the City Council calculates each year. The tax base takes account of the number of properties in our area but also the number of empty properties, discounts and, crucially, the proportion of council tax the City Council assumes it will collect. Tax bases usually go up slightly each year but, as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the tax base for 2021-22 has gone down because the City Council anticipates that more people will have difficulties in paying.
That means there will be a very small increase in the amount you will pay for the services the Parish Council provides – for an average property, just 7 pence a month.