Band D in Eastbourne is £2,654.28 this year, and the council's own web page prints a total £121.79 short. Every band A to H, and the four precepts.

A band D household in Eastbourne pays £2,654.28 for the year to 31 March 2027. A band A household pays £1,769.52 and a band H household pays £5,308.56.

Only £294.59 of that band D bill is Eastbourne Borough Council’s. The county council takes £1,960.29, or 74p in every pound.

Eastbourne publishes the full table only inside a five megabyte PDF leaflet. Its own web page carries a shorter version, and that shorter version is wrong: the four precepts it lists add up to £2,654.28, but it prints the total as £2,532.49, which is £121.79 short. The figures below come from the leaflet and from the council’s statutory notice of 6 March 2026, which agree with each other exactly.

Every band, and what each authority takes

Eastbourne council tax charges 2026/27, 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027
BandEastbourne BoroughEast Sussex CountySussex PoliceEast Sussex FireTotalIf you live alone
A£196.39£1,306.86£187.94£78.33£1,769.52£1,327.14
B£229.13£1,524.67£219.26£91.38£2,064.44£1,548.33
C£261.86£1,742.48£250.59£104.44£2,359.37£1,769.53
D£294.59£1,960.29£281.91£117.49£2,654.28£1,990.71
E£360.05£2,395.91£344.56£143.60£3,244.12£2,433.09
F£425.52£2,831.53£407.20£169.71£3,833.96£2,875.47
G£490.98£3,267.15£469.85£195.82£4,423.80£3,317.85
H£589.18£3,920.58£563.82£234.98£5,308.56£3,981.42

Source: the council’s Council Tax leaflet 2026-27, corroborated by the statutory council tax notice for the Eastbourne borough area, published 6 March 2026.

The final column is what a sole adult occupier pays after the 25% single person discount. It is worth checking against your bill, because the discount is not applied automatically.

There is no parish or town precept in Eastbourne. The borough is unparished, so the bill has four parts rather than the five paid in most of East Sussex.

The leaflet also lists a band below A, shown as “@”. This is the disabled band reduction, charged at five ninths of band D, or £1,474.60. It applies where a disabled resident needs an extra room, or needs to use a wheelchair indoors, and it moves you a band down from wherever you started.

Where a band D council tax bill goes in Eastbourne, 2026/27 A single stacked bar splitting the 2,654.28 pound band D bill between four authorities. East Sussex County Council takes 1,960.29 pounds, Eastbourne Borough Council 294.59 pounds, Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner 281.91 pounds, and East Sussex Fire Authority 117.49 pounds. Eastbourne Borough Council keeps 11p of every council tax pound Band D bill of £2,654.28 for 2026/27, split between the four precepting authorities. East Sussex County Council £1,960.29 East Sussex County Council£1,960.29, 73.9%, up 4.99% Eastbourne Borough Council£294.59, 11.1%, up 2.99% Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner£281.91, 10.6%, up £15.00 East Sussex Fire Authority£117.49, 4.4%, up £5.00 Sources: Eastbourne Borough Council Council Tax leaflet 2026-27; statutory council tax notice, 6 March 2026. Graphic by Eastbourne Live.
The borough council sets less than an eighth of the bill it sends you, which is why its own 2.99% rise adds only £8.55 while the whole bill rises by far more.

What changed this year, and who changed it

Four separate bodies set their own share. All four raised it for 2026/27.

  • East Sussex County Council: up 4.99%, a combined general and adult social care precept increase, agreed at full council on 10 February 2026. At band D it takes £1,960.29.
  • Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner: up £15.00 to £281.91, a rise of about 5.6% and the most allowed without a referendum. The Sussex Police and Crime Panel signed it off on 30 January 2026.
  • East Sussex Fire Authority: up £5.00, from £112.49 to £117.49, about 4.4%.
  • Eastbourne Borough Council: up 2.99%, from £286.04 to £294.59, an extra £8.55 a year or 16p a week. Cabinet agreed it on 11 February 2026 and full council on 25 February.

The borough’s own budget went the other way. Its council tax requirement fell from £12.305m to £10.807m, a drop of £1.498m, and gross spending fell £4.125m, because the number of band D equivalent properties in Eastbourne grew from 36,019.8 to 36,685.2. More properties sharing a smaller requirement is why a 2.99% rise raises so little.

Announcing the budget, council leader Stephen Holt said it “remains a source of frustration that while our portion of the bill is rising by just pennies a week to maintain local services, the much larger share taken by East Sussex County Council continues to place the heaviest burden on Eastbourne households”.

Checking your band, and challenging it

Bands are set on what a property would have sold for on 1 April 1991, not on what it is worth now. A house built last year is still valued as if it had existed in 1991.

Council tax bands and 1991 property values
BandValue on 1 April 1991
AUp 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
HMore than £320,000

Bands are set by the Valuation Office Agency, part of HMRC, not by the council. The council cannot change your band and neither can anyone you pay.

  • Look yours up free at gov.uk/council-tax-bands.
  • To challenge it, contact Council Tax South, Valuation Office Agency, Second Floor, 1 Francis Grove, Wimbledon, London SW19 4DT, telephone 0300 050 1501.
  • Keep paying the instalments on your bill while an appeal is running. If you win, the overpayment is refunded.

The council issues a specific warning about this on its Your Council Tax explained page. Eastbourne residents have been contacted by companies offering banding reviews and area comparisons for an administration fee of “anything upwards of £65”. The VOA does the same thing for nothing.

Discounts and who is disregarded

The main one is the 25% single occupancy discount, for anyone whose home is their sole or main residence and who lives alone.

Some people are ignored altogether when the council counts the adults in a household, which can bring a two-adult home down to the single person rate:

  • full-time students, and certain non-UK spouses and dependants
  • apprentices on qualifying schemes
  • people who are severely mentally impaired and receiving a qualifying benefit
  • 18 and 19 year olds at school or college, or who have just left
  • low-paid care workers, usually working for charities
  • people caring for someone with a disability, other than a spouse, partner or child under 18, and receiving a qualifying benefit
  • members of visiting forces and certain international institutions
  • monks and nuns
  • people in prison or detention, unless they are there for council tax or fine non-payment
  • diplomats and their non-British spouses

Two further 50% discounts exist. One is for job-related accommodation, where your contract requires you to live in a property provided by your employer and you pay full council tax somewhere else. The other is for an annexe used as part of the main home, or lived in by a relative of the person liable for the main property.

Twenty-one classes of full exemption are listed in the leaflet, covering student halls, homes left empty after a death while probate is settled, armed forces accommodation, properties where occupation is prohibited by law, and homes occupied only by under-18s or only by people who are severely mentally impaired.

Empty homes and second homes are charged more, not less

Eastbourne has removed every discount for empty property and does not discount second homes at all.

  • No discount for empty and unfurnished property, of any kind.
  • Empty homes premium, in place since 1 April 2024: an extra 100% after one year, 200% between five and ten years, and 300% after ten years.
  • Second homes premium of 100%, in place since 1 April 2025, on any furnished dwelling that is nobody’s sole or main residence.

A band D second home therefore costs £5,308.56 a year, the same as a band H family home. These premiums attach to the property, not the owner, so selling an empty house does not reset the clock.

If a property is derelict, being converted, or undergoing structural alteration that makes it uninhabitable, the VOA may delete it from the council tax list altogether. That is a different route from the premium, and it is worth asking about before the premium bites.

If you cannot afford it

The Local Council Tax Reduction Scheme is means tested. You generally need to be on a low income, from work or from benefits such as Universal Credit, and to have less than £16,000 in savings.

Two Eastbourne-specific rules matter:

  • Every working-age claimant pays at least 20% of their council tax, however low their income. The council set that floor on 1 April 2016.
  • Anyone self-employed for more than 12 months has their income assessed as either their actual earnings or 35 times the hourly National Living Wage, whichever is higher.

Pensioners are assessed on national rules instead, which the council does not set.

There is also an Exceptional Hardship Scheme for people who already qualify for Council Tax Reduction and are still in difficulty. The form is on the council’s website or available from the Town Hall on Grove Road.

Paying

Council tax is legally payable over 10 monthly instalments, but Eastbourne offers up to 12 if you ask. Spreading the same bill over 12 months rather than 10 cuts a band D payment from £265.43 to £221.19 a month. The council does not advertise this on the bill, so you have to contact them.

If you are behind, or have had a final notice or a court summons, the number for advice is 01323 410000. Keep paying what you can while anything is being disputed, because an appeal does not suspend the instalments.

Where to check next