Adult social care precept on your 2026/27 council tax bill

How the precept appears on the bill

Open any English upper-tier council's demand notice for 2026/27 and you will see the adult social care precept on its own line. It will typically be labelled adult social care precept or ASC precept, with the cumulative annual amount shown on the right and the percentage increase from the previous year shown below it. For an upper-tier authority charging the average 2026/27 Band D total of £2,392, the adult social care precept line will be approximately £165 of that total, with around £47 of it added in 2026/27 alone.

The separate presentation requirement was introduced when the precept was created in 2016/17. It is set out in the Council Tax (Demand Notices) (England) Regulations 2011, as amended by successive statutory instruments. The intent was to make it visible to residents how much of their council tax goes specifically to adult social care. Councils are not permitted to bury the precept inside the headline council tax line.

How the cap works year by year

The adult social care precept cap is set separately from the standard council tax referendum cap. For 2026/27 the standard cap was 2.99 per cent of the previous Band D base; the adult social care precept added a further 2 per cent of the same previous Band D base. So an upper-tier authority that took both could raise its total Band D by 4.99 per cent. Most authorities did exactly that.

The mechanics matter. The 2 per cent precept is calculated on the previous year's entire Band D figure (council tax plus the existing precept), not on the existing adult social care precept alone. That means each year's 2 per cent precept rise adds a larger cash amount than the year before, because the base it is calculated on has grown. The compounding effect over the eleven years since 2016/17 means the cumulative precept on the national Band D average is now approximately £165 (up from around £20 in the first year of the system).

What the precept actually pays for

Adult social care is one of the largest single budget lines in any upper-tier authority. It includes domiciliary care (workers visiting older or disabled adults in their own homes), residential care placements (in council-run, private and voluntary-sector homes), supported living arrangements for adults with learning disabilities, mental-health placements, reablement services for hospital discharge, and the assessment and safeguarding teams that triage all of the above.

Funding pressures in adult social care have intensified for over a decade as the population ages, the workforce shortages widen, and the gap between the actual cost of providing care and the funding councils receive grows. The Care Act 2014 placed new statutory duties on councils to meet eligible needs without any way to cap individual placement costs. The cumulative effect is that adult social care is the largest single line on most upper-tier budgets and the precept is by some distance the most reliable additional revenue available.

The precept across the bands

Because the precept is shown as part of the Band D figure and every other band is a statutory proportion of Band D, the precept scales by band. On the average English bill the adult social care precept adds:

• Approximately £110 on Band A (six-ninths of Band D's £165)
• Approximately £128 on Band B (seven-ninths)
• Approximately £147 on Band C (eight-ninths)
• Approximately £165 on Band D (the reference figure)
• Approximately £202 on Band E (eleven-ninths)
• Approximately £238 on Band F (thirteen-ninths)
• Approximately £275 on Band G (fifteen-ninths)
• Approximately £330 on Band H (eighteen-ninths)

Per-council variation is wide because the precept rises depend on each council's previous Band D. A council with a Band D of £2,538 has a precept rise of around £51 in 2026/27; a council with a Band D of £971 has a precept rise of around £19.

How the precept interacts with discounts

Every council tax discount applies to the full gross bill, including the adult social care precept. A 25 per cent single occupant discount on a Band D bill takes £2,392 down to £1,794, including 25 per cent off the £165 adult social care precept. Council tax reduction, the disabled-band reduction, and the severe mental impairment disregard all work the same way. There is no separate exemption for the adult social care precept and no separate appeal route that targets it.

Distinct from the social care levy

The adult social care precept on the council tax bill is distinct from the health and social care levy that was briefly implemented at national level in 2022, then repealed within months. The national levy was a National Insurance increase rather than a council tax precept; the precept on your bill remains and is locally collected. The two systems were never combined.

Two-tier areas

In two-tier areas (where a county council and several district councils both exist), the precept appears only on the county council line of the bill. District councils such as East Hampshire or Sevenoaks do not charge it because they do not provide adult social care services. On a two-tier bill the precept will be labelled on the county council line and presented as one of the components of the county council total.

For more on bill components

The adult social care precept is one of several lines on the typical English council tax bill. The others are the core council tax for the council itself, the police and fire precepts, the parish or town precept if there is a smaller local authority, and in London the Greater London Authority precept. For the full picture of what the council itself spends on (not just the adult social care precept) see what council tax pays for.

If your bill looks higher than you expect, the first place to check is whether your band is correct. The GOV.UK council tax band lookup shows the band for any address. If comparable houses nearby are in a lower band, see how to challenge your council tax band. About 27 per cent of formal proposals to the Valuation Office Agency result in a lower band.