City Mayor council tax letter

Dear Resident,

With this letter you will find your council tax bill for 2024/25.

Council tax helps pay for essential services provided by Leicester City Council, Leicestershire Police and Crime Commissioner, and the Combined Fire Authority.

The amount of council tax we can charge is controlled by the Government, which expects tax rises to be made when it decides how much grant to pay us.

Leicester City Council will be increasing its tax this year by 5%, 2% of which is to support social care. The Combined Fire Authority is increasing its share of tax by
3.0%, and the Police and Crime Commissioner is increasing his share by 4.8%. This means total tax will increase by 4.9%.

Setting our budget is very difficult. The amount of money we have to spend is limited by the Government and our financial outlook is very severe for a number of reasons:

1. a decade of austerity between 2010 and 2020, in which spending on services other than social care had to be reduced by 50% in real terms, taking inflation into account. This has made it much harder to make more savings now.
2.  recent cost pressures, shared by authorities across the country, including increases in the costs of looking after children and support for homeless households, as well as the long-standing pressures in adult social care

We have been able to set this budget after making savings, and by using our reserves. In common with authorities across the country, we are predicting that future budgets will be even more difficult to balance. I have already written to the Government about the impact this will have on local councils. Work on a sustainable plan has already begun, but we know we will need to make more cuts, and control spending as much as possible.

I know that increases in living costs are making it very hard to make ends meet. We offer help with ways to pay your council tax and with how much you have to pay. Every year we help thousands of households across Leicester in this way. There is more information about discounts and support on the back of your bill or online at leicester.gov.uk/counciltax.

You can also find information about cost of living support at leicester.gov.uk/costofliving.

If you are worried that you might struggle to pay your council tax, please telephone 0116 454 1005 as soon as possible.

Yours faithfully, 

Sir Peter Soulsby, City Mayor