The 2023/24 Precept - March/April 2023 Edition

It’s an interesting year to look at precepts. On the one hand we have the cost-ofliving crisis, which suggests that increasing the precept might not be very helpful to residents, and on the other hand we have high inflation and a shift towards communities needing to look after themselves, which suggests that increasing the precept by at least inflation and maybe more is essential. So, here we analyse the precepts set by councils nationally and in Northamptonshire to see what happened this year:

There are 10,326 local precepting bodies in England. Of these, 8,883 are parish and town councils that have raised a precept for 2023/24. The remainder are mostly parish meetings that have not raised a precept.

In England, parish and town council precepts total £708 million in 2023/24, an increase of 8% on 2022/23. It represents 1.8% of the total council tax raised by local authorities.

The national totals and averages hide the enormous diversity in the sector. For example, the twenty highest-precepting town councils account for just over 8% of the total precept raised. Thirteen of these have precepts higher than £2 million. Northampton Town Council (NTC) is in the top twenty with a precept for 2023/24 of £1,807,837. Note that 15 of the top twenty precepting councils are in unitary authority areas.

For all councils, Band D tax rates are 14.6% higher in unitary authority areas than in three-tier areas  (parish/district/county).

The average Band D tax rate for all precepting councils in 2023/24 is £78.79, an increase of £3.98 or 5.3% over the previous year.

In Northamptonshire there are 277 local precepting bodies, but of those 40 are financially inactive parish meetings (zero precept) and other non-council bodies. The total raised by the 237 precepting bodies for 2023/24 is £19,628,590, an increase of £1,506,282 or 8.3%. The average Band D tax rate for 2023/24 is £81.86, an increase of £4.49 or 5.8%.

The highest precepting council is Northampton Town Council at £1,807,837. It is one of four councils in Northamptonshire in the million-pound club, along with Daventry Town Council, Rushden Town Council, and, for the first time, Brackley Town Council (£1,009,630). Northampton Town Council’s Band D tax rate is

£48.78 (0% increase on 2022/23).

The top ten precepting councils raise a total of £8,971,363 or 45.7% of the total for all councils. The average Band D tax rate for the top ten councils is £152.18. The highest Band D tax rates in Northamptonshire are levied by Blakesley Parish Council (£249.20), and Oundle Town Council (£243.71). The lowest precepting body is Catesby Parish Meeting, with a precept of just £90 and a Band D tax rate of £2.54!

Most precepting bodies in Northamptonshire have a very modest income. 65 councils (27%) have a precept of £10,000 or less and a further 64 councils (27%) have a precept between £10,001 and £25,000. 70 councils (30%) have a precept between £25,001 and £100,000, and just 38 councils (16%) have a precept over £100,001.

There is a significant difference between the two unitary authority areas, due mainly to the fact that precepts in the former borough of Kettering (in North Northamptonshire) have been much lower than average in the past.

The figures for the north will increase rapidly over the next few years as Corby Town Council, Kettering Town Council, Wellingborough Town Council, and the parish councils in the former district of Kettering gradually come into line with

county and national averages.

In terms of percentage change in precept the biggest mover was Kislingbury Parish Council, which increased its precept from £32,000 to £61,000, an increase of £29,000 or 91%. Kislingbury has grown though, so the resulting Band D tax increase was 77%.

Legally the precept falls out of a calculation of budget requirement. The council should work out its budgeted expenditure, decide whether it wishes to take money from reserves or put money into reserves, and the resulting amount is the precept. It is a process prescribed in law. Given that a council’s budget requirement changes from year to year (by inflation if nothing else) it is almost unimaginable that the precept could work out to precisely the same figure from year to year. Therefore, most of the thirty-five councils in Northamptonshire that set the exact same precept for 2023/24 as they did in 2022/23 almost certainly started from the precept and worked backwards. Four councils took an even more “sophisticated” approach and made sure that the Band D tax rate was the same for 2023/24 as 2022/23, which means taking the Council Tax Base into account in the calculation. Again, this is not part of the process prescribed in law.

If you would like to compare your council against others in Northamptonshire, you

will find a spreadsheet of precept, Band D, and Council Tax Base per parish as an attachment below.