Parish Precept
What is the Parish Precept?
A parish council gets its funding by receiving a small amount of the local Council Tax. This is referred to as the Parish Precept.
How is the precept calculated?
Each parish council forecasts the amount of funding it will require for the following year and requests this funding from Northumberland County Council in the form of a precept tax included within the local Council Tax.
A Council Tax base is calculated by equating to the number of Band D equivalent properties in each parish after taking into account things like:
- The number of properties in each band during the year (including changes and appeals)
- Disabled relief
- Discounts and exemptions
- Provision for bad or doubtful debts
- Allowance for growth
The tax base figures are expressed as Band D equivalents in accordance with the relevant regulations.
The tax base is used to indicate the amount of Council Tax required for the parish to cover the precept by performing the following calculation:
- Divide the precept by the Council Tax base for your parish. This provides the Council Tax for a Band D property.
- Multiply the Band D Council Tax by the appropriate factor to calculate the Council Tax for each of the other bands.
It should be noted that, in addition to any Council Tax resulting from the Parish Precept, there will also be Council Tax levied in respect of the County Council and the Police and Fire Authorities.
What does all this mean?
All this means that even if the Parish Council requests the same financial precept for the whole parish for the next financial year, due to changes in the number of Band D equivalent properties in the parish, the individual precept for each property may change. This can result in the individual precept rising or falling by a small percentage even when the parish precept as a whole has not changed.