Wokingham Council Tax Bands 2026/27: Woodley Pays Most

The average band D council tax in Wokingham borough for 2026/27 is £2,497.70, up 5.12% on last year. That average hides the only figure that actually varies across the borough. Three of the four charges on the bill, the borough council’s own, Thames Valley Police and Royal Berkshire Fire, are identical at every address. The fourth, the town or parish precept, ranges from £31.00 in Barkham to £117.09 in Woodley.

So a band D house in Woodley pays £86.09 a year more than an identical one in Barkham, and none of that difference goes to the services most people think of as council services.

Wokingham is a unitary council, so there is no county line on the bill. It also gets less from central government than almost any other English council, which is why the borough’s own budget breakdown says 83% of its money comes from council tax.

The full band A to H table for 2026/27

Every figure below comes from the council’s Council Tax by Band and Parish 2026/27, the PDF the council buries behind its bands page.

Increases this year: Wokingham Borough Council 4.99%, made up of 2.99% on the general charge and 2.00% on the adult social care precept. Thames Valley Police 5.30%. Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue 5.79%. The average parish precept rose 6.93%, the steepest of the four.

Your actual bill, by parish

The whole borough is parished, all 17 of them charge a precept, and the table below is the total you pay at each band. Find your parish and read across.

Woodley is the most expensive place in the borough at every band and Barkham the cheapest. Wokingham Town, despite giving the borough its name, sits below the borough average.

The parish precept is where the movement is

The percentage changes on the parish line are far wider than anything the borough, police or fire authority did:

• Twyford: up 33.8%, from £76.16 to £101.91 at band D, easily the steepest rise in the borough.
• Barkham: up 18.0%, from £26.28 to £31.00, though it remains the lowest precept anywhere in the borough. It had cut the precept by 0.6% the year before.
• Swallowfield up 10.7%, Woodley up 9.7% to £117.09 after freezing it last year, Charvil up 9.5%, Finchampstead up 8.5%, Shinfield up 7.0%, Wokingham Town up 6.7%.
• Arborfield and Newland froze theirs at £88.94, a 0.0% change.
• Remenham cut its precept by 0.7%, from £89.47 to £88.88, the only reduction in the borough.

Last year’s figures are from the council’s 2025/26 band and parish charges.

A parish precept is not capped by the referendum rules that limit the borough, police and fire increases, which is why a 33.8% rise is legally possible at all. The council lists every parish council’s website on its charges and increases page if you want to see what your own precept is paying for.

What the borough’s own share buys

Wokingham Borough Council’s element of a band D bill is £2,027.40 a year, £168.95 a month or £38.99 a week. Its budget for 2026/27 is £191,182,540, divided like this (council tax budget breakdown 2026/27):

Two thirds of the budget goes on adult and children’s social care. The figures include £19.1m of depreciation charges, which the council deducts when it works out net expenditure.

The police and fire lines

Thames Valley Police takes £298.28 at band D, an increase of £15 a year, or 29p a week. The Police and Crime Commissioner’s 2026/27 budget is £622m, up £27m. His leaflet says the December 2025 funding settlement gave Thames Valley £9m less than expected and that the Home Office would fund only around 40% of the cost of new officers. The force promises 53 more neighbourhood officers this year and a dedicated roads policing tasking team.

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service takes £91.31 at band D, also up by £5. The authority consulted before setting it and reported that 78% of more than 270 respondents supported the £5 increase.

One oddity in the council’s own PDF

If you are checking the arithmetic, the split between the borough’s two lines at band D does not follow the ratios used for every other band.

Council tax bands are fixed multiples of band D: A is six ninths, B seven ninths, C eight ninths, E eleven ninths, F thirteen, G fifteen and H eighteen. Apply that to the adult social care precept row in the council’s PDF and band A of £201.53 scales to £302.30 at band D. Band E of £369.48 and band H of £604.60 give the same answer. The PDF prints £340.92.

The same £38.63 appears to have come out of the “Wokingham Borough Council excluding ASC precept” row, whose other bands scale to £1,725.11 at band D against the £1,686.48 printed. The two lines still add to £2,027.40, so the total you are billed is not affected. Only the split between the two council lines at that one band is inconsistent with the rest of the table.

How Wokingham compares in Berkshire

All six Berkshire unitaries, average band D including every precept, from MHCLG’s Council Tax levels set by local authorities in England 2026 to 2027, Table 10:

The England average is £2,391.52, so Wokingham sits £106.18 above it. Windsor and Maidenhead, next door, charges £545.08 less at band D than Wokingham does.

Discounts you have to ask for

None of these are applied automatically.

• Single person discount: 25% off, if you are the only adult over 18 at the address. It is your sole or main residence that counts, so a long holiday does not qualify you, and neither does a partner who works away most of the time.
• Students. A property where everyone is a full-time student is exempt. A discount applies where some residents are students, but not if two or more non-student adults live there. Full-time means at least 21 hours a week over 24 weeks, or, if you are under 20, at least 12 hours a week for three months on a further education course.
• Apprentices earning no more than £195 a week, including any allowance, get a discount, as do youth trainees under 25 on an approved scheme.
• Disability band reduction. If a resident is permanently disabled and the home has an adapted room, a second bathroom or kitchen for their use, or enough space for daily wheelchair use, the bill drops to the band below. A band A property gets one ninth of the band D charge taken off instead. Stairlifts, extra rails, a zimmer frame or a blue badge do not qualify on their own.
• Severe mental impairment, carers and annexes each have their own discount.
• Section 13A hardship discount, at the council’s discretion.

Council Tax Reduction

Wokingham’s working-age scheme is banded on monthly income, and the conditions are tighter than several neighbouring councils (Council Tax Reduction scheme):

• Capital above £4,000 rules you out entirely.
• Claims cannot be backdated.
• The minimum award is £3 a week.
• Help is capped at the band D charge, so a higher-banded property gets no more.
• Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Armed Forces Independence Payment, War Disablement Payments, Child Benefit and child maintenance are all disregarded as income, as is Carer’s Allowance and £7.50 a week of take-home pay.
• Other adults in the house cost you £5 a week if they are on Universal Credit, of pension age, not working or earning up to £139.99, and £10 a week if they earn more than £140.

Changes have to be reported within 21 days.

Empty homes and second homes

Wokingham charges premiums on both, and they are steep.

• Second homes: a 100% premium since 1 April 2025. A substantially furnished property that is not anyone’s main home pays double. “Substantially furnished” means three or more items of furniture, and carpets, curtains, white goods and anything built in are excluded from the count.
• Empty and unfurnished for more than one year: 100% premium, so double.
• More than five years: 200% premium, so triple.
• More than ten years: 300% premium, so four times the normal bill.

There is no discount at all for an empty, unfurnished property, or one being repaired or altered. Exemptions do exist, including properties being actively marketed for sale or to let for up to 12 months, homes within 12 months of a grant of probate, and annexes treated as part of the main dwelling (premiums for second homes and long-term empty properties).

Checking or challenging your band

Bands were set on property values as at 1 April 1991, not today’s. Wokingham Borough Council does not set them and cannot change them: that is the Valuation Office Agency’s job.

• Look up any address free at gov.uk/council-tax-bands.
• If you think the band is wrong, start at gov.uk/challenge-council-tax-band. Keep paying the current bill while a challenge is open.

A successful challenge can move neighbouring properties too, and the band can go up as well as down.

Where else to look

Wokingham Online’s other local information pages: bin collection days, parking in Wokingham, roadworks and travel, house prices and planning news.