Everything you need to know about the massive council tax rise coming next year

The council is going to double your council tax bill. For a typical home that means about £1,000 a year more, starting with higher monthly payments in April. To be exact, it is a 94% increase in the overall bill and a 188% increase in the part the council itself charges (half your bill goes to the Mayor of London).

It depends on your band. The figure you keep hearing, £958, is for Band D.

Living alone still gets you 25% off. Parts of Putney and Roehampton pay the Commons levy on top, £41 at Band D this year. Bills are normally paid in ten instalments, so a Band D payment goes up by about £96 a time; ask for 12 and it is about £80. Our calculator does the sums for your home, and GOV.UK will tell you your band.

No. Councillors vote on it in March 2027, and until then it is a plan. The council says the rise will not be needed if the government restores its funding: "Council tax will need to rise unless Government thinks again," says Cllr Peter Graham, who runs the council's finances. But it is not a scare. The figures are the council's own, and it is writing to every bill-payer with them.

The government has changed how it shares money between councils, and Wandsworth is one of the biggest losers. Councils live on two things: a government grant and council tax. The grant tops up what a council cannot raise itself. The government now works that out as if every council charged the national average, about £2,000 at Band D. Wandsworth charges half that, so on paper it looks able to raise far more, and its grant is being cut: £19m this year, the council says, and £84m a year by 2030, about 40% of it.

Ministers say they are "reconnecting funding with need" and will no longer be "subsidising very low bills". The council says it is being punished for being efficient, and is challenging the decision.

No. It is the biggest part, but less than half. By 2030 the council expects to be £223m a year short. Its own report splits that into £84m of government cuts, £65m of inflation, £41m of spending plans it inherited, £24m of rising demand for care and housing, and £8m of new spending such as extra police. It is counting on £79m of savings, which leaves £143m for council tax.

Cllr Graham admitted as much in the chamber. Had the £84m been the only problem, the savings would nearly have covered it. "Unfortunately, it is in some sense a local matter," he said, and blamed the rest on Labour.

Labour's leader, Cllr Simon Hogg, makes a fair point in return: the grant falls by about £80m in three years' time, but the council wants about £140m more in tax next April. Next year's gap is already £168m. Most of it, £96m, was there before the Conservatives' review, and gaps like it have been filled from savings: as much as £50m this year, Cllr Graham says. Another £49m is one-off spending the council says will pay for itself later. So the rise does two things at once. It replaces the grant, and it stops the council paying everyday bills out of savings.

There is, but the government has switched it off for Wandsworth for two years. Normally a council must win a local referendum to raise council tax by 5% or more. Ministers told Parliament in February 2026 that they do not intend to set that limit in 2027/28 or 2028/29 for the six councils with the lowest bills: Wandsworth, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, the City of London, and Windsor and Maidenhead.

So there will be no referendum, and that was the government's call, not the council's. Ministers did not order anyone to use the freedom, but their funding sums assume councils will.

Because the council has chosen to protect its savings. With the limit off for two years, the rise could have been split between April 2027 and April 2028. Cllr Graham says that "would leave no reserves at all", and he wants to keep about £76m in hand. We ran the figures: two steps were affordable, at a one-off cost of £33m to £66m, leaving reserves close to zero.

So it is a political choice. The council has decided a £76m cushion matters more than softening the blow to households. It is a gamble too, because the whole rise lands at once.

Labour says the Conservatives are raising tax now so they can cut it before the next election. Nobody can check a prediction, but the plan itself shows the council's share held flat for three years after 2027, not cut.

That is Labour's promise, but it has not shown how the sums work. Cllr Hogg told the council Labour would keep rises to 5% a year, find £45m of savings without cutting services, pay private landlords less to house homeless families, and use reserves to ease the change. "We have reserves, we have time that other councils do not," he said.

A 5% rise brings in about £4m a year. The gap next year is £168m. Labour's own budget in February 2026 showed council tax having to raise £143m next year, up from £77m, once reserves stopped filling the hole. A chart in the council's report shows reserves running out in 2028/29 on what it calls the previous path.

Some of Labour's ideas, such as cutting the cost of housing homeless families, are in the Conservative plan too.

Yes, though it is not bankrupt. You will hear that Wandsworth has some of the highest reserves in London and no debt. Both are true, and together they mislead.

The reserves first. The accounts show £701m, but most of it is locked by law to council housing, building projects and money from developers. The pot that pays for everyday services peaked at £205m in 2023, stands at £162m, and is due to fall below £100m by April 2027. Labour's last budget planned to take £38m out of it; Cllr Graham says the true figure this year is £50m. That is how a Labour councillor could say her party left "a fully funded budget": it was, from savings. Cllr Hogg's "more than £100 million in the bank" was true when he said it and, on the council's figures, will not be by April 2027.

Now the debt. The accounts say the council "has no external debt", which is the line Labour quotes. But it has borrowed from itself: £129m by March 2025 and £184m by May 2026.

Say you have £20,000 in a savings account for a new roof and a rainy day, and you want a £10,000 kitchen. Instead of going to the bank, you take the money out of savings and write yourself an IOU. Your spreadsheet still says "Savings: £20,000", because you mean to pay it back. You can honestly tell the neighbours you owe the bank nothing. But there is £10,000 in the account. If the roof goes, you will need the bank after all. And if you are also dipping into the same account for the weekly shop, that day comes sooner.

The kitchen is the £184m. The weekly shop is the £38m to £50m a year. Borrowing from yourself is normal and cheaper than a loan, but it is still borrowing: in 2024/25 the council set aside £11.4m from its budget to pay it back. Cllr Graham accepts there is "no external debt", and says it turns into real loans as the reserves run down.

Croydon is what the end of that road looks like. Its auditors warned three years running that reserves were too low. In 2020 the budget gap outgrew them and Croydon declared it could not balance its books. It is now one of 35 councils allowed to borrow to pay running costs.

Yes: £79m a year by 2030, of which £16m has not been found yet. The council's report says £59m comes from a review of how it works and £4m from decisions already taken. It warns the later years "carry higher delivery risk".

So far it has suspended grants to local charities, brought back charges for bulky waste, ended holiday food vouchers and cancelled 253 planned council homes. Labour says breakfast clubs have been cut; Cllr Graham says they are moving to the government's new national scheme. Some spending is going up, including 25 extra police officers.

Still below average, on this year's figures. The new Band D bill of £1,978 compares with £2,392 across England and £2,068 across London this year, though everyone else's bills will have risen by April 2027 too. The council's own share would go from the lowest in London to eighth lowest of 33.

Help is promised, but the details are not out yet. The council says its reduction scheme will take up to about 50% off for working-age households on low incomes, reach more of them than now, and phase the rise in so nobody on it gets one big jump. Pensioners' support is set nationally and does not change.

The catch: some working-age residents pay nothing now, and that ends. "Everyone of working age will pay something," Cllr Graham said. Asked if that includes disabled residents and war widows, he said the details would come in a consultation "in the coming weeks".

Discounts for living alone, students and people with a severe mental impairment carry on. If you expect to struggle, tell the council early; Citizens Advice Wandsworth gives free, independent help.

Both parties knew before the election, and neither gave voters a figure. The funding deal was published in December 2025 and confirmed in February 2026, three months before polling day. "Both parties had the figures and saw this coming," Cllr Hogg told the council. Labour promised rises of no more than 5%. The Conservatives promised to fix the finances and did not say what it would cost.

There has been no consultation on the rise itself. The council's survey is about its priorities and its fight with the government.

All 58 councillors, in March 2027, and no party has a majority. The May 2026 election returned 29 Conservatives, 28 Labour councillors and one independent; it takes 30 to win a vote. The Conservatives are one seat short and govern with the independent, Cllr Malcolm Grimston, who has agreed in writing to back them on the budget and council tax. A by-election in August 2026 changed nothing. Cllr Grimston calls the rise "a horrendous thing for any of us to face" and the savings "optimistic", but in an email to his constituents noted that the Conservatives' account of the finances is closer to the truth.

Yes, in two ways: the government changes its mind, or the council votes differently in March. Wandsworth is challenging the funding decision with Westminster, Richmond, and Kensington and Chelsea, and has lobbied ahead of the Budget. The national Conservative Party says it has instructed lawyers. The government says it is "fixing an outdated funding system" and that council tax is for councils to decide. Putney's MP, Fleur Anderson, who voted for the funding deal, says the council should keep rises to 5% and use reserves. Labour says it would reverse the rise if it wins back control.

If you want a say:

• Back the council's challenge through its survey. We have explained what the challenge involves.
• Sign Labour's petition against the rise.
• Watch the council's scrutiny committees, which meet in public and examine the figures in the coming weeks.
• Write to your ward councillors. Each has a vote in March.

The final rate. The details of the help scheme. What the Mayor will charge. Whether the government moves. And whether £79m of savings, which everything else rests on, can be found. We will update this page as each becomes clear.