Hillingdon Council Tax 2026/27: Band D Is £2,045.46

A Band D household in Uxbridge pays £2,045.46 in council tax this year, made up of £1,534.95 for Hillingdon Council and £510.51 for the Greater London Authority. That is £93.08 more than the £1,952.38 charged in 2025/26.

Below is every band, both halves of the bill, what changed and why, and the discounts that are open, including one that is now shut to new applicants.

Council tax bands in Hillingdon, 2026/27

Bands are set on what a property would have sold for on 1 April 1991, not on what it is worth now.

Source: Council tax bands 2026/27, Hillingdon Council.

What changed this year

The Hillingdon share rose by 2.99 per cent, with a further 2 per cent adult social care precept on top. The council puts the effect at £1.40 a week on a Band D bill and says the result is “still lower than neighbouring authorities and well below the national average”. (Council tax guide 2026/27, Hillingdon Council)

The GLA half went up by £20.13 at Band D, and the increase is almost entirely policing and fire.

The council’s own table has two columns and no more. There is no parish or town council precept on a Hillingdon bill, so those two lines are all of it.

One number in the budget is worth knowing, because it is the reason the increase is not larger. Hillingdon’s council tax requirement for 2026/27 is £164.775 million, up from £154.127 million. Getting there involved £61.389 million of Exceptional Financial Support, the government mechanism councils use when they cannot balance the books from their own resources. The council also says it is holding £40 million of reserves against demographic and inflationary pressures.

For scale, the council expects to raise £164.8 million from council tax and spend 37p of every pound of it on adult social care, 14p on children’s social care, 15p on corporate support services, 8p on housing, 7p on education, 7p on waste collection and disposal and 5p on cultural, environmental and planning services.

How to check your band, and how to challenge it

Your band is on your bill. To look it up independently, or to query it, the council is not the body to ask: bands are set by the listing officer at the Valuation Office Agency, part of HM Revenue and Customs.

Check a band on the VOA’s council tax band search, which covers every address in England. To challenge one, contact the VOA through gov.uk/guidance/contact-the-voa or on 03000 501 501.

Be clear about what a challenge is. The VOA can only look at whether the 1991 valuation was right, and a review can move a band up as well as down. Separately you can appeal to the council itself if you think you are not the resident or owner, that the property is exempt, or that the bill has been calculated wrongly.

Discounts

Single person, 25 per cent. The bill assumes two adults live in the property. If you are the only adult, it drops by a quarter. Apply through your council tax account. An extended holiday does not count as living alone. (Single person discount, Hillingdon Council)

Students. A property where every resident is a student is exempt entirely. Where students share with non-students the discount is 25 or 50 per cent, and you need a certificate from each student’s college or university showing the hours, the dates and the institution’s stamp. Full-time students, student nurses, apprentices earning under £195 a week and youth trainees are all disregarded, and so are 18 and 19 year olds who have just left education, for 1 May to 31 October.

Disability relief. If a room, other than a bathroom, kitchen or toilet, is used mainly by a disabled person, the bill is reduced to that of the band immediately below the property’s actual band.

Over-65s: closed. Hillingdon used to run an Older Person Discount, and this is the one people still ring up about. It has been closed to new applicants since 1 April 2021. Existing recipients are protected, with the council awarding a cash-equivalent reduction to what they had on their previous bill, but nobody turning 65 now can join it. (Over-65s’ council tax discount, Hillingdon Council)

Council Tax Reduction Scheme. This is the safety net, and the working-age scheme changed on 1 April 2026. You need savings under £6,000 if you are working age, or under £16,000 if you are pension age unless you receive pension credit, and you must be the person named on the bill and living there as your only or main home. Working-age applicants also have to fall into one of the scheme’s banding categories. (Council Tax Reduction Scheme, Hillingdon Council)

Empty homes and second homes cost more, not less

There is no discount for an empty property in Hillingdon, and from 1 April 2026 a premium applies to second homes. The long-term empty premium climbs with the years.

A property being refurbished still pays the premium. The only route out is the VOA deleting it from the council tax list altogether, which requires it to be derelict rather than merely unusable. Exceptions exist for armed forces job-related accommodation, annexes, probate within 12 months of the grant, and properties actively marketed for sale or let, also for 12 months. (Empty properties and second homes, Hillingdon Council)

Also on Uxbridge News

Bin collection days covers what the waste share of the bill actually buys and what still costs extra, parking in Uxbridge has the current tariffs, and Uxbridge house prices tracks what property in the borough sells for now, as opposed to in 1991.