Ealing Council Tax Calculator, Bands and Rates: 2026/27
Calculate your exact Ealing council tax bill for 2026/27. The total Band D charge is £2,138.53, made up of the borough's own element of £1,628.02 and the shared Greater London Authority precept of £510.51. Ealing's leadership describes this as the first budget in 16 years without cuts to frontline services - a characterisation the opposition disputes, pointing to specific planned centre closures within the same budget.
Ealing Council Tax 2026/27: "No Cuts" or Ten Closures? Two Readings of the Same Budget
Ealing Council's Full Council meeting on 3 March 2026 confirmed a 4.99% rise on the borough's own element - 2.99% general plus the 2% Adult Social Care precept - adding £77.38 to take Ealing's own Band D charge to £1,628.02. Adding the Greater London Authority precept of £510.51 (itself up £20.13), the total Band D bill is £2,138.53. Council Leader Councillor Peter Mason and Cabinet Member Councillor Steve Donnelly both described this as the first Ealing budget in 16 years achieved without cuts to frontline services, attributing this to a combination of the government's Fairer Funding Review and what they characterised as careful financial management.
That characterisation is directly contested. Liberal Democrat group leader Councillor Gary Malcolm responded: "Liberal Democrats are surprised that Labour are saying they are not cutting front-line services when they still plan to shut 10 Children's Centres and Acton's Michael Flanders Day Centre for vulnerable users." Both claims can be true simultaneously depending on definition: the council's own framing may refer to service reductions avoided elsewhere in the budget, while the opposition's claim refers to specific facility closures proceeding regardless. Readers should treat "no cuts" as a contested characterisation rather than a settled fact, and weigh both the council's own budget documentation and the opposition's specific claims about named facilities before drawing a conclusion.
Ealing Council Tax Bands A-H: 2026/27 Rate Table
All eight bands are fixed fractions of the Band D rate, set nationally in ninths, based on your property's estimated market value on 1 April 1991.
| Band | Ealing element | GLA precept | Total annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | £1,085.35 | £340.34 | £1,425.69 |
| B | £1,266.24 | £397.06 | £1,663.30 |
| C | £1,447.13 | £453.79 | £1,900.92 |
| D | £1,628.02 | £510.51 | £2,138.53 |
| E | £1,989.80 | £623.96 | £2,613.76 |
| F | £2,351.58 | £737.40 | £3,088.98 |
| G | £2,713.37 | £850.85 | £3,564.22 |
| H | £3,256.04 | £1,021.02 | £4,277.06 |
Is Ealing really "second lowest in outer London"?
Cabinet Member Councillor Steve Donnelly's claim that Ealing sets "one of the lowest council taxes in the country - and the second lowest in outer London" is checkable directly against other boroughs covered in this series. At £2,138.53, Ealing sits below Bromley (£2,140.04) and well below Redbridge (£2,294.58) and Bexley (£2,366.36). However, Barnet's approximate total of £2,132.60 is marginally lower still - meaning the "second lowest" claim depends on exactly which outer London boroughs are being compared and how precisely each figure is calculated. The claim is broadly accurate in spirit - Ealing is genuinely among the very cheapest outer London boroughs - but readers should treat the specific ranking claim as an approximation rather than a precisely verified league table position, since small differences of a few pounds separate several boroughs at this end of the range.
The Fairer Funding reclassification caveat, again
Ealing's own budget strategy explicitly credits the Fairer Funding Review and Business Rates Reset for making this year's budget achievable, alongside Brent and Hounslow as named beneficiaries. Ealing's own report includes the same caveat found on several other boroughs' budget papers in this series: the settlement "incorporates... consolidation and simplification of previous funding streams," meaning grants "previously held within Corporate items are now consolidated into the Revenue Support Grant" - producing "significant variances" in any straightforward year-on-year funding comparison. As with Brent's more explicitly quantified breakdown, this means Ealing's own claimed funding improvement should be read with some caution about how much reflects genuinely new money versus funding streams simply being relabelled and folded into a different reporting line.
A small technical quirk: why Ealing's collection fund share exceeds the total surplus
Ealing's own budget papers disclose a genuinely counter-intuitive accounting detail: the council's specific share of the Collection Fund surplus, £0.911 million, is described as higher than a simpler pro-rata calculation might suggest, because "the reason for Ealing's share being higher than the total is because its percentage share of the council tax surplus is greater than the share of the business rates deficit." In plain terms, council tax and business rates surpluses or deficits are apportioned between the council, the GLA, and other precepting bodies using different percentage splits for each revenue stream - so a borough can genuinely receive more from a combined surplus calculation than a single blended percentage would produce, simply because the two underlying revenue streams (council tax and business rates) are shared out differently. This is a niche point, but it illustrates that "the council's share of £X million" figures in local budget documents are rarely as simple as one fixed percentage applied uniformly.
Three real-world Ealing scenarios
Typical mistakes Ealing residents make
- Taking the "no cuts" claim as an uncontested fact. Opposition councillors have named specific facilities they say are closing within the same budget - both framings deserve consideration.
- Assuming "second lowest in outer London" is a precisely verified ranking. Several outer London boroughs sit within a few pounds of each other at this end of the range, including Barnet, which may be marginally lower still.
- Confusing bulk waste collection charges with council tax. These are separate charges, recently reduced following resident and opposition pressure, but not part of your council tax bill.
- Reading the Fairer Funding improvement as pure new money. As with several other boroughs in this series, part of the apparent improvement reflects funding stream reclassification, not solely new funding.
2025/26 versus 2026/27: what actually changed
Ealing's own element rose by the same 4.99% mechanism in both years. What is materially new for 2026/27 is the council's explicit framing of this as its first budget in 16 years without frontline service cuts - a characterisation contested by opposition councillors over specific facility closures - alongside the first year of a new three-year local government finance settlement to 2028/29, incorporating the Fairer Funding Review and Business Rates Reset.
Decision guide: who should act on this information
Discounts and reductions available in Ealing 2026
Universal Credit and council tax in Ealing
If you receive Universal Credit, it does not automatically reduce your council tax. Use our Universal Credit Calculator to estimate your UC entitlement, then apply for Council Tax Reduction separately at ealing.gov.uk.
How to challenge your council tax band
Ealing does not decide your band - challenges go to the Valuation Office Agency. Start at gov.uk/challenge-council-tax-band. You must continue paying at your current band throughout the process; a successful challenge is refunded and can be backdated.