Kent County Council wants to hear from residents on where to cut spending and whether Council Tax should rise — but the clock is ticking, with responses needed by Monday 7 September 2026.
Households across Kent have less than a week to tell the county council how it should balance its books for 2027–28. Which services to protect, where to cut, and how much extra they’re prepared to pay in Council Tax. The consultation runs through KCC’s Let’s Talk Kent platform and covers three areas: priorities for savings, ideas for raising income or reducing costs, and views on Council Tax options.
The exercise covers more than £2.8 billion of annual spending on services used by Kent’s 1.6 million residents, including adult and children’s social care, home-to-school transport, waste disposal, public health, libraries and roads.
KCC says rising demand — particularly in children’s services and adult social care — combined with higher inflation and energy costs is squeezing its budget hard. The council must set a legally balanced budget each year, with Council Tax levels signed off by full council every February.
The choices on the table
The consultation sets out five Council Tax scenarios, ranging from no increase at all to a rise of 10%. The figures attached to them show how tightly the two halves of the problem are linked.
At 4.99% — the maximum a council can levy without triggering a local referendum — a Band D household would pay about £87.75 more a year, or roughly £1.68 a week. That would raise around £52 million, and would still leave a savings gap of about £58 million. A 10% increase would raise around £105 million and cut the savings required to roughly £5 million. With no increase at all, KCC projects a shortfall of between £100 million and £120 million.
For 2025–26, KCC approved an increase of just under 5%, raising around £994 million through precepts collected by district and borough councils including Canterbury, Maidstone, Dover and Thanet. The following year it went lower: on 12 February 2026 the county council approved a 3.99% rise for 2026–27, deliberately below the national 5% cap.
What residents say this time could genuinely shape what happens next — which services survive intact, whether KCC returns to the legal limit or settles for lower rises and deeper cuts, and whether fees go up for things like household waste recycling centres.
Whatever emerges goes through KCC’s democratic committees before the full council votes on the final budget in February 2027.
Key information
- Deadline: Monday 7 September 2026
- How to respond: Budget Consultation 2027-28 on KCC’s Let’s Talk Kent platform
- Topics covered: Service savings priorities, income generation ideas, Council Tax options
- Who it affects: All households in Kent that pay Council Tax to KCC, and users of county services including schools, libraries, social care and highways
The final budget will go before full Kent County Council for approval in February 2027.