Aylesbury Council Tax Bands 2026/27: Band D Is £2,626

Buckinghamshire Council publishes its band A to H charges as a 172-row PDF schedule, one row per parish, and does not put the number on a web page. Here it is for Aylesbury and the towns and villages around it.

A band D home inside the Aylesbury Town Council area pays £2,626.21 in 2026/27, up £134.23 or 5.4% on last year’s £2,491.98.

The full band A to H table for Aylesbury Town

The annual figures are the council’s. The monthly column is simple arithmetic on the standard ten-instalment year and is here as a rough guide, not a quote from your bill.

Where the money actually goes

Four bodies charge on one bill, and a fifth line is added if you live in a parish that sets a precept. For band D in Aylesbury Town the split is:

• Buckinghamshire Council core charge: £1,699.92
• Adult social care precept: £330.69 (the council’s charge including social care is £2,030.61)
• Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley: £298.28
• Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire Authority: £89.46
• Aylesbury Town Council: £207.86

Every household in the county pays the first four. Add them together and you get £2,418.35 at band D, which is exactly what you pay if you live in one of the 24 parishes that set no precept at all, such as Addington, Aston Sandford, Barton Hartshorn or Biddlesden.

What changed this year

• Buckinghamshire Council: up 4.99%, made up of 2.99% for general services and 2% ring-fenced for adult social care. The council notes this shows as 5.0% on the bill because of rounding rules, and is under the 5% referendum limit.
• Thames Valley police: up £15.00 at band D, from £283.28 to £298.28, a rise of 5.3%.
• Bucks and Milton Keynes fire: up £5.00 at band D, from £84.46 to £89.46, a rise of 5.9%.
• Aylesbury Town Council: up £17.71 at band D, from £190.15 to £207.86, a rise of 9.3%. The town council’s precept is the fastest-rising part of an Aylesbury bill this year, and unlike the others it is not capped.

Buckingham has the highest bill in Buckinghamshire

Three of the county’s five most expensive parishes are on this side of it. Sorting all 172 rows of the council’s Schedule 4 by band D:

Buckingham Town’s £2,664.60 is the highest band D charge anywhere in Buckinghamshire, and the next two are local as well: Kingsbrook, the estate on the north-east edge of Aylesbury that became its own parish in 2020, then Aylesbury Town. Fulmer and Chesham, in the south of the county, are fourth and fifth. The gap between Buckingham Town and a village with no parish council is £246.25 a year on the same band, for the same county, police and fire services.

Check your band, and challenge it if it looks wrong

Bands are set by the Valuation Office Agency, not the council, and they are still based on what a property would have sold for on 1 April 1991. You can look up any property’s band free on GOV.UK.

Buckinghamshire Council’s challenge your band page draws a distinction worth understanding before you start:

• a proposal is a formal challenge, available only in limited circumstances such as having paid council tax on the property for less than six months. The VOA must review your band.
• a band review is informal, open to anyone who has paid for more than six months, and carries no such right. The VOA will only look at it if you provide strong evidence.

Keep paying while an appeal is running. A successful challenge can move a band up as well as down.

Discounts and exemptions

Single person: 25% off. The bill assumes two or more adults. If you are the only resident aged 18 or over it drops by a quarter. The council reviews these regularly and asks you to confirm you still qualify. It does not apply to second homes, and someone temporarily away in hospital, working away or travelling does not count as having left.

Students, apprentices and under-18s. There are separate discounts and exemptions for full-time students, apprentices and youth trainees, school and college leavers, properties occupied only by under-18s, and 18 to 20-year-olds still covered by Child Benefit.

Disability. A disabled band reduction applies if the property has an extra room used by a disabled resident, an extra bathroom or kitchen for their needs, or enough floor space for indoor wheelchair use. There are also disregards for carers, and for people who are severely mentally impaired.

Care leavers under 21, armed forces accommodation, annexes, care homes and Homes for Ukraine all have their own routes. The council’s discounts, exemptions and disregards index lists them.

Empty homes and second homes: Bucks is unusual

Empty property premiums bite after one year, not two. The council changed that on 1 April 2025, and the charges stack:

• empty 1 to 5 years: 200% of the normal bill
• empty 5 to 10 years: 300%
• empty more than 10 years: 400%

The premium follows the property, not the owner, so buying a house that has been empty for two years means inheriting the premium. Exceptions cover armed forces accommodation, annexes, furnished property, up to 12 months from the date a property is genuinely marketed for sale or rent, and up to 12 months from the grant of probate.

Buckinghamshire also removed both of the discounts that used to soften an empty home. From 1 April 2024 there is no one-month 100% discount for an empty and unfurnished property, and no 50% discount for one undergoing structural work.

Second homes pay no premium here. That is unusual. Councils have been able to double council tax on second homes since April 2025, and neighbouring Milton Keynes, Slough and Wokingham took the option. Buckinghamshire did not. An amendment to introduce a 100% second home premium was put to full council on 21 February 2024 and lost by 71 votes to 23, even though the council’s own finance team had put the yield at about £1.16m a year net from 718 second homes. The council’s published discounts and premiums policy records the second home premium as “not to be charged”, and the only second home relief left is a 50% discount for genuinely job-related dwellings. The 10% general second home discount went in April 2023.

Help if you cannot pay: the scheme changed in April

Buckinghamshire replaced its working-age Council Tax Reduction scheme on 1 April 2026 with an income-banded one. Instead of a calculation against an applicable amount, your net weekly income is compared to a band for your household type, and the discount is one of five fixed levels: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% or nothing.

Anyone on Income Support, income-related Employment and Support Allowance or income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance goes straight into the 100% band.

Several things are left out of the income figure altogether, including Child Benefit, child maintenance, Carer’s Allowance, Attendance Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Disability Living Allowance and the housing element of Universal Credit. If you work there is a £25 disregard per household, and if you claim a disability benefit a further £50.

The hard cut-off is savings. Working-age applicants with £6,000 or more cannot get anything, which is a much lower bar than the £16,000 that applies at pension age. Pension-age claims continue under the national prescribed scheme.

One warning about the second adult rebate table on the council’s own page: the bands as published overlap. It lists a 15% reduction for a combined second-adult gross income of “less than £289 per week” and 7.5% for “£276 to £374.99”, so anything between £276 and £289 falls in both. If your figure lands in that range, ask the council which applies.

Full detail and the application form are on the council’s get help paying your council tax page. Evidence has to be in within 21 days of submitting the form or the claim is refused and you start again.

Sources

• Buckinghamshire Council, Council Tax Resolution 2026/27 (PDF): the police, fire and adult social care figures
• Buckinghamshire Council, Council Tax bands and charges 2026/27, Schedule 4 (PDF): band A to H by parish
• Buckinghamshire Council, Parish precepts 2026/27, Schedule 3 (PDF)
• Buckinghamshire Council, Council Tax bands and charges and long-term empty properties
• Comparison with 2025/26 uses the council’s Schedule 4 for 2025/26 and Council Tax Resolution 2025/26 (PDFs)

Also on The Aylesbury Times

• Aylesbury bin collection days, including bank holiday changes
• Parking in Aylesbury, with current tariffs for every council car park
• Aylesbury roadworks and travel, updated from the council’s weekly list