Council tax is set to increase by 2.99% for Tandridge residents in 2024/2025.
The decision was made during a council meeting on 8 February, in which Tandridge District Council (TDC) also agreed on next year’s budget.
The increase, which comes into effect in April, will mean those living in Titsey, the district’s cheapest area for council tax, will pay £2,223.53 per year, while in Crowhurst, the most expensive area, residents will pay £2,311.97.
Council Leader Catherine Sayer said that fees had been increased by ‘as little as possible’, which was a ‘tremendous effort’ considering TDC announced it had found a hole of £1m in its finances in June. This has since been rectified.
Sayer added: “You may look at… Croydon, which has gone bust, which is now having a 15% increase… We were presented with close to that situation, and I feel we’ve done an enormously positive job to get to where we are.”
Your council tax bill, which will arrive in March, is used to fund a number of essential services, such as rubbish collection, community safety and housing provision.
This is how the rest of your council tax fee is distributed:
- Surrey County Council receives 75%
- Surrey Police receives 14%
- Tandridge District Council receives 10%
- Parish councils receive around 1%
The amount of funding Surrey Police receives has increased by 4.2% from last year, after a consultation with residents between December 2022 and January 2023 received over 3,000 responses.
Lisa Townsend, police and crime commissioner for Surrey, then presented her proposal on the amount of council tax that Surrey residents need to pay towards policing on 2 February, which was accepted.
Commissioner Townsend said she was hopeful that the £13 a year increase would allow the police to provide a better service to Surrey’s residents:
“It concentrates on what policing does best – fighting crime in our local communities…[Residents] want their police to be there when they need them, to answer their calls for help as quickly as possible and to tackle those crimes which blight their everyday lives in our communities.”
