Band D is £2,400.03 before your parish adds its share, after a rise Whitehall gave special permission for. Full A to H table, the precept split and the discounts.
Shropshire Council raised its share of council tax by 8.99% in April 2026, nearly double the 4.99% that councils are normally capped at. It could do that because central government gave it specific permission to, one of a short list of authorities in financial trouble allowed to go past the referendum limit.
Full council approved it on 26 February 2026. The extra 4 percentage points raise £8.8m, and the council says it will borrow less as a result. Shropshire declared a financial emergency in September 2025 and has since been awarded exceptional financial support, according to its own explanation of the rise.
Here is what that produced on the bill.
What a band D bill is made of
The first three parts are the same for every household in the county. Together they come to £2,400.03 at band D. Everything above that is your parish or town council.
Band A to H, before any parish precept
These are the charges for the parishes that levy no precept of their own, so they are the floor for the whole county.
| Band | 2026/27 charge |
|---|---|
| A | £1,600.01 |
| B | £1,866.69 |
| C | £2,133.35 |
| D | £2,400.03 |
| E | £2,933.37 |
| F | £3,466.72 |
| G | £4,000.04 |
| H | £4,800.06 |
And the same table for Shrewsbury Town, where most of the county’s urban households are:
| Band | 2026/27 charge |
|---|---|
| A | £1,714.83 |
| B | £2,000.65 |
| C | £2,286.44 |
| D | £2,572.26 |
| E | £3,143.87 |
| F | £3,715.50 |
| G | £4,287.09 |
| H | £5,144.52 |
Band D is the standard comparison, but it is not the typical Shropshire home. On the council’s own count at 28 July 2026, of 153,765 properties in the county:
- Band B is the largest group, 39,195 homes
- band C, 32,189
- band A, 27,630
- band D, 22,241
- band E, 17,864
- band F, 9,432
- band G, 4,852
- band H, 362
More than two thirds of Shropshire homes are in bands A to C.
What your town adds
Every parish and town council sets its own precept on top of the £2,400.03. The spread at band D is £308.06 between the cheapest parish and the dearest.
| Town | Band D 2026/27 | Parish share |
|---|---|---|
| Bishop’s Castle | £2,708.09 | £308.06 |
| Church Stretton and Little Stretton | £2,702.60 | £302.57 |
| Ludlow | £2,654.73 | £254.70 |
| Much Wenlock | £2,634.49 | £234.46 |
| Bridgnorth | £2,611.29 | £211.26 |
| Ellesmere | £2,604.17 | £204.14 |
| Cleobury Mortimer | £2,591.82 | £191.79 |
| Shifnal | £2,581.27 | £181.24 |
| Shrewsbury | £2,572.26 | £172.23 |
| Whitchurch | £2,567.95 | £167.92 |
| Oswestry | £2,547.79 | £147.76 |
| Market Drayton | £2,542.84 | £142.81 |
Bishop’s Castle has the highest band D bill in Shropshire. The lowest, £2,400.03, is paid in the nine parishes that levy nothing at all: Ashford Bowdler, Clee St Margaret, Greete, Hope Bagot, Hopton Castle, Lydham and More, Neenton, Sibdon Carwood and Whitton. Charges for all 164 parish and town areas are on the council’s band charges page.
The rise nobody talked about was the parish one
The headline was Shropshire Council’s 8.99%. The steepest increase was somewhere else entirely. Across the county, parish and town precepts rose 26.66% at band D, from a £12.28m total in 2025/26 to £15.61m in 2026/27.
Two councils account for most of it, on the figures in the council’s 2026/27 council tax guide:
- Shrewsbury Town Council: £2,389,594 to £4,772,978. Its precept almost exactly doubled in one year, and its gross spending went from £4.92m to £6.78m.
- Oswestry Town Council: £588,315 to £815,978, a rise of 39%, drawn against gross expenditure of £3.22m and income of £1.73m.
By comparison Ludlow Town Council held almost flat, £946,000 to £946,655, and Bishop’s Castle stayed at £220,000. Councils precepting more than £140,000 have to publish their budget alongside the precept, which is why those numbers are visible at all. For smaller parishes, the clerk is the only source.
Check your band, and challenge it
Your band was set on what the property was worth on 1 April 1991, not what it is worth now. The 1991 ranges are:
| Band | 1991 value |
|---|---|
| A | Up to £40,000 |
| B | £40,001 to £52,000 |
| C | £52,001 to £68,000 |
| D | £68,001 to £88,000 |
| E | £88,001 to £120,000 |
| F | £120,001 to £160,000 |
| G | £160,001 to £320,000 |
| H | £320,001 and above |
Look up any property’s band free on the VOA’s checker, and if you think yours is wrong, the grounds and process are at gov.uk/challenge-council-tax-band. The VOA is on 03000 501 501 if you cannot use the online service.
One thing to be clear about: you must keep paying at your current band while the challenge is decided. Withholding payment does not pause the debt.
Discounts and reductions
From the council’s 2026/27 bill explanatory notes:
- Single person: 25% off. A full bill assumes two or more adults.
- All adults disregarded: 50% off. Students, apprentices, carers, prisoners, people who are severely mentally impaired, patients in hospital or a care home and several other groups do not count as adults for this purpose. If everyone but one is disregarded, you get the 25% discount instead.
- Disability reduction: if someone in the household needs an extra room or extra space because of a permanent disability, the bill is charged as though the property were one band lower. Band A properties can be reduced too.
- Annexes: 50% off, where occupied by a relative of the person liable for the main home, or used as part of it.
Empty and second properties go the other way:
- unoccupied and substantially unfurnished: 100% discount for one month, nothing after
- second homes: 100% premium since 1 April 2025
- empty one to five years: 100% premium; five to ten years: 200%; over ten years: 300%
- the premium attaches to the property, not the owner, so it survives a sale, and only six continuous weeks of occupation clears it
- no discount at all for a property needing or undergoing major repair
Council tax support
Shropshire’s scheme is not the national one. For working-age households the council runs a local version that caps support at 80% of the bill, rising to 100% only for households classed as vulnerable, meaning a severe disability premium, the support component of ESA, a war pension or the limited capability for work and work-related activity element of universal credit.
The local scheme also counts child benefit as income, applies no earnings disregards, and refuses any claim worth less than £1.50 a week. People of state pension age get the full national scheme with none of those amendments.
Support is never awarded automatically, and normally only runs from the Monday after the claim is received, so applying late costs money. The council also launched a Crisis Resilience Fund on 1 April 2026 for residents in difficulty.
Most bills are spread over ten months by default. You can ask to pay over twelve instead, which cuts the monthly figure by roughly a sixth.
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