Parish tier changes and your Council Tax bill 2023/24

If you need help making sense of your bill, you can view our understanding your bill page.

Following a Community Governance Review (CGR), we have created two new parish tier councils in the Chelmsford City Council area:

Chelmsford Garden Community Council
Chelmer Village Council

These changes mean that around 7,000 households are now in one of these new parishes. If you fall into one of these new parishes, you will see their parish charge on your Council Tax bill.

The changes to these areas mean:

around 3,300 properties from Boreham, Broomfield, Little Waltham and Springfield parishes now fall under the Chelmsford Garden Parish,
around 4,000 properties from Springfield parish now fall under the Chelmer parish
31 properties have moved from Little Waltham to Broomfield parish.

Parish tier councils make a charge included in your Council Tax to raise money for local community services. We show this charge on your Council Tax bill. Your Council Tax bill will also show how much each charge has increased by as a percentage.

For example:

Your Council Tax for 2023/2024 is made up as follows:

Note: The average council tax percentage change for Chelmsford City Council is 2.98%. However there may be variations to the percentage change for both the City Council and the Parish Tier Council owing to the effects of the Localised Council Tax Support Scheme and special expenses. Information about the percentage change figures is available at www.chelmsford.gov.uk/council-tax-bands-and-amounts

If you are in one of the new parish areas, your percentage change will show as ‘0.0% change’. This is because there was no parish charge for the new parishes in 2022/2023.

This explanation also applies to the charge for Chelmsford City Council. The Chelmsford City Council charge comes from the basic Council Tax charge for the city, plus any ‘special expenses’. There were no special expenses charge for the new parishes in 2022/2023.

If your property remains in the parishes of Broomfield, Little Waltham or Springfield your parish charge will increase this year. This is because there are fewer households in these parishes sharing the cost of providing parish facilities.