Ashford Council Tax Bands 2026/27: Band D Is £2,342.93

Ashford Borough Council publishes its 2026/27 band charges as a spreadsheet download, and the breakdown of who gets the money in a separate PDF leaflet. Neither is on the page you land on if you search for your band. This page puts both on one screen.

Every figure below comes from those two documents, checked on 1 September 2026, with the county, police and fire increases cross-checked against Kent County Council’s own budget page.

The 2026/27 charge, band by band

Most of Ashford town is unparished, and the council calls that area “Ashford Urban”. If you live there, this is your whole bill, and it is the lowest in the borough because nothing is added on top.

Source: Ashford Borough Council, Council tax in Ashford 2026/27 (PDF).

Band A is two thirds of band D. Band H is double it. Live in a parish and your parish council’s precept is added to every one of those figures.

Band D in Ashford Urban was £2,249.78 in 2025/26, so this year’s £2,342.93 is a rise of 4.14%, or £93.15 (2025/26 banding charges).

Who put the bill up, and by how much

Four bodies set a charge, and all four raised it. They did not raise it by the same amount.

Kent County Council approved its rise on 12 February 2026. Its referendum threshold this year was 5%, made up of 3% general and 2% for adult social care, and it stopped short at 3.986%, about £5.62 a month more on a band D home. It no longer shows the adult social care element separately, because councils stopped being required to from 1 April 2025 (Kent County Council, Council Tax 2026 to 2027).

Ashford Borough Council took the smallest rise of the four, at 2.99%. Councils could choose 2.99% or £5, whichever is greater; £5.79 was Ashford’s 2.99%. The council’s own line is that its share is “one of the lowest in Kent”, £199.37 against a Kent district average of £246.67.

That figure is worth reading twice, because the leaflet contradicts itself on it. The table of contributions by band puts the borough’s band D share at £199.37, and the comparison table on the same document puts it at £199.57. The £199.37 is the one that reconciles: last year’s £193.58 plus the £5.79 rise the council describes, and the one that adds up to the published £2,342.93 total.

Every parish area, band A to H

Forty-two parish bodies set a precept in the borough: 41 parish and town councils plus Crundale parish meeting. Between them they cover 46 charging areas in the council’s band table, because four of them cover two named areas each. Ashford Urban, the unparished part of the town, is first in the table below.

The spread at band D runs from £2,342.93 in Ashford Urban to £2,538.36 in Tenterden, a gap of £195.43. All of the difference is the parish precept.

Source: Council tax bandings 2026/27 (spreadsheet), linked from the council’s valuation and band charges page.

The parish precepts, and what moved this year

The parish share of the bill is the part nobody scrutinises, and it is the part that rose fastest. Parish precepts across the borough went from £3,029,502 to £3,309,423, an increase of 9.2%, against the borough council’s own 2.99% (parish expenditure and precepts 2026/27).

At band D the parish element ranges from £9.47 in Crundale to £195.43 in Tenterden. The five largest are Tenterden £195.43, Charing £184.27, Wye with Hinxhill £179.75, Great Chart with Singleton £146.16 and Aldington and Bonnington £142.48.

The biggest movements this year:

• Brabourne raised its precept from £36,000 to £58,000, up 61.1%. Its band D parish charge went from £56.87 to £91.63, and its total band D bill rose 5.51%, the steepest rise anywhere in the borough.
• Bethersden put its precept up 21.5%, Smeeth 20%, Biddenden 18.7%, Kenardington 18.3% and Aldington and Bonnington 18.2%.
• Boughton Aluph and Eastwell cut its precept 9.7%, from £45,284 to £40,882. Its band D parish charge fell from £41.97 to £37.96, the only fall in the borough.
• Crundale, the parish meeting, went from £700 to £900. That is up 28.6% and still the smallest precept in the borough by a wide margin.

Five parishes froze their precept in cash terms: Appledore, Hothfield, Kennington, Molash and Orlestone. Four of them still charge more per household than last year, because a frozen precept divided by a smaller tax base gives a bigger band D figure. Hothfield’s parish charge rose 5.0% on a precept that did not move at all. Stanhope shows the same effect the other way round: its precept went up 10%, its band D parish charge up 20.6%.

One figure the council’s own documents disagree on

Tenterden is the borough’s only town council, and the leaflet gives it a panel of its own. That panel puts the 2026/27 precept at £742,222, being £782,500 of estimated expenditure less £40,278 of income.

The precept actually charged is £782,500. That is the figure in the council’s parish precept spreadsheet, and it is the one that reconciles: £195.43 at band D across a tax base of 4,004 comes to £782,482, and £2,342.93 plus £195.43 is the £2,538.36 published for Tenterden Town in the band table. The £742,222 in the leaflet panel does not reconcile to any published charge.

If you live in Tenterden, the number on your bill is the £195.43.

Checking your band, and challenging it

Your band was set on what the property would have sold for on 1 April 1991, not on what it is worth now. The England bands are:

Look your own band up on GOV.UK, and read the rules on challenging a band before you do anything else. A challenge can move a band up as well as down, and it can move your neighbours’ too.

Bands are the Valuation Office Agency’s job, not the borough council’s. Liability, discounts and exemptions are the council’s. The deadlines are different:

• Banding: appeal within three months of the decision notice, to the VOA
• Liability, discount or exemption: appeal within two months of the decision notice
• Keep paying at your current band while an appeal is running

The council also offers an informal review by email to revenues@ashford.gov.uk, marked “Appeal - FAO Revenues & Benefits Manager”. Its own page warns that this “does not pause the official timeline set by the Valuation Tribunal” (queries and appeals).

Discounts, and the premiums that go the other way

Single person discount is 25% if you are the only adult in the property. It applies to your sole or main residence only, working away or being on holiday does not count, and it can be backdated no more than six months or to the start of the financial year, whichever is the greater (single person discount).

Other reductions include the disabled band reduction, a 50% annexe discount where the annexe is occupied by a relative or used as part of the main home, and disregards for students and certain other occupants. Kent County Council pays the council tax for care leavers aged 18 to 21 who were in Kent local authority care.

Ashford is harder than most on empty and second homes, and two of its rules changed recently (premium charges):

• The old 100% discount for an empty, unfurnished property, and the discount for one undergoing major repairs, were both abolished on 1 April 2024. Full council tax is now due from the day it empties.
• Empty one to five years: 100% premium, so a doubled bill. The trigger used to be two years and was cut to one on 1 April 2024.
• Empty five to ten years: 200% premium. Empty ten years or more: 300%.
• Second homes: 100% premium from 1 April 2025, with no qualifying period. A furnished property that is not somebody’s sole or main residence qualifies from day one, and the council says holiday lets are caught.

The premium attaches to the property, not the owner. Buy a house that has stood empty a year and you inherit the doubled bill.

Council tax reduction changed on 1 April 2026

This is the local change most likely to affect a bill this year, and it is not on the council tax pages at all. Ashford replaced its working-age Council Tax Reduction scheme on 1 April 2026 with an income-banded one (changes to our Council Tax Reduction scheme from April 2026).

The new scheme disregards Carer’s Allowance, PIP, DLA, Attendance Allowance, Child Benefit, the first £25 of earnings, and every Universal Credit element except the Standard Allowance. What is left decides which of five bands you fall into:

The top band is 90%, not 100%, so a working-age claimant in Ashford always has some council tax to pay. The bands rise each year in line with the national minimum wage. Pension-age claimants are unaffected, because the government sets their scheme.

Non-dependant deductions still apply. Where a deduction is due at all, working-age claimants lose a flat £10.00 a week per non-dependant, whatever that person earns. Pension-age claimants lose between £5.20 and £15.95, on a sliding scale by the non-dependant’s gross income.

Anyone who thinks the change has hit them can ask for a written calculation from counciltaxsupport@ashford.gov.uk, or a referral to the council’s Welfare Intervention Officers at welfare@ashford.gov.uk.

Also on The Ashford Times

• Ashford bin collection days, one of the services the borough’s £199.37 pays for
• Parking in Ashford
• Ashford house prices, which is not what your band is based on