The full A to H table for Andover Town for 2026/27, what each precept added, and the £20.80 borough charge for burial grounds that only Andover pays.

Test Valley publishes its council tax charges as a PDF with 51 parishes down one side and eight bands across the top, which is thorough and almost unreadable. This page pulls out the Andover row, sets it against last year, and explains the one line on an Andover bill that no other part of the borough pays.

The quick answer

  • Band D in Andover Town: £2,306.39 for 2026/27, up £110.08 on last year.
  • That is 5.01% more than 2025/26.
  • Hampshire County Council takes £1,690.11 of it, 73% of the bill.
  • Test Valley Borough Council keeps £173.91, 7.5%.
  • £20.80 is a borough charge levied only in Andover for burial grounds, sports grounds and playgrounds.
  • The adult social care precept has gone as a separate line, merged into the county’s.
  • Check your band on the Valuation Office Agency site.

The full table for Andover Town, 2026/27

These are the total annual charges, including every precept. Source: the council’s Council Tax Charges for 2026/27.

Band 2026/27 2025/26 Change
A £1,537.59 £1,464.21 +£73.38
B £1,793.86 £1,708.24 +£85.62
C £2,050.13 £1,952.27 +£97.86
D £2,306.39 £2,196.31 +£110.08
E £2,818.92 £2,684.38 +£134.54
F £3,331.44 £3,172.45 +£158.99
G £3,843.98 £3,660.52 +£183.46
H £4,612.78 £4,392.62 +£220.16

Every band is worked out as a fixed fraction of band D: A is six ninths, B seven ninths, C eight ninths, E eleven ninths, F thirteen ninths, G fifteen ninths and H eighteen ninths. So the percentage rise is the same in every band, 5.01%, even though the cash differs by £147 between band A and band H.

If you live outside a parish or town council area, the charge is lower. All other parts of the borough pay £2,247.32 at band D, and that figure is the base every parish builds on.

Where the money goes

Who gets your Andover council tax in 2026/27

Six bodies share an Andover bill. Their band D shares for 2026/27, from the council’s council tax charges page and the council tax resolution adopted by full Council on 26 February 2026:

Precept Band D Change on 2025/26
Hampshire County Council £1,690.11 +£80.28 (+4.99%)
Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner £290.46 +£15.00 (+5.45%)
Test Valley Borough Council £173.91 +£5.00 (+2.96%)
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue £92.84 +£5.00 (+5.69%)
Andover Town Council £38.27 +£4.20 (+12.3%)
Andover special expenses (borough) £20.80 +£0.60 (+2.97%)

The county council is nearly three quarters of the bill and the borough is less than a thirteenth of it, which is worth remembering the next time a bin is missed and the borough gets the blame for the price of everything.

The £20.80 nobody mentions

Look at the Andover Town row on the council’s PDF and you see one number. It is actually two.

Under section 35 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, Test Valley treats £363,626 as “special expenses”: the cost of running burial grounds, sports grounds and playgrounds in the parish of Andover that Andover Town Council does not run. Because that money is spent in Andover, it is charged to Andover, and the council’s resolution puts it at £20.80 per band D property.

So an Andover band D bill contains a borough charge of £173.91 that everyone in Test Valley pays, plus £20.80 that only Andover pays, plus £38.27 for the Town Council. Nobody in Romsey, Stockbridge or Whitchurch pays that middle figure. Last year it was £20.20.

The town council’s rise

Andover Town Council’s precept went from £591,494 to £669,105, an increase of £77,611 or 13.1%. Its budget papers put the extra mainly under Policy and Resources, up from £360,642 to £430,611.

The band D effect is smaller than that because the town’s tax base grew, from 17,361 properties to 17,482. A parish or town precept is not capped by the referendum rules that limit the borough, county, police and fire, so this is the part of the bill that can move furthest in a year.

What changed at the top of the bill

The adult social care precept is no longer a separate line. The council says the legislation changed this year and it is now combined with Hampshire County Council’s precept. It has not gone away: of the county’s £80.28 increase, £32.19 is adult social care, exactly 2.00%, according to the government’s council tax statistics. It is simply no longer shown to you separately.

Hampshire says its council tax is “one of the lowest of any county council in England” and points at a £10.9 million cut in 2026/27 from the new government funding formula, part of a £42.9 million reduction by 2028/29.

The police precept rose by exactly £15.00 at band D, £1.25 a month. The fire authority took £5.00, which its own budget page calls a 5.69% rise and “under 50p a month for three quarters of households”.

Test Valley itself took £5.00, from £168.91 to £173.91. Of the county, police, fire and borough precepts, it is the only one that rose by less than 3%.

How to check and challenge your band

Your band was set by the Valuation Office Agency on what your home was, or would have been, worth on 1 April 1991, not today. The council does not set it and cannot change it.

Band 1991 value
A Up 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
H £320,001 and above

Look yours up at gov.uk/council-tax-bands. If you think it is wrong, you challenge the VOA, not Test Valley, at gov.uk/challenge-council-tax-band.

One warning the council repeats and which people get wrong: keep paying at your current band while the challenge is running. If it succeeds you get a refund. If you stop paying you get recovery action.

Discounts and reductions

  • Single person discount: 25% off, if you are the only adult aged 18 or over whose main home it is.
  • Students are disregarded entirely on a full-time course of at least a year involving 21 hours a week for 24 weeks, or, if under 20, a course of more than three months at 12 hours a week. The disregard covers vacations. You need a student certificate from the college.
  • Care leavers pay nothing. Test Valley gives a 100% discount to care leavers aged 18 to 25 who spent at least 13 weeks in Hampshire County Council’s care from the age of 14, topping up whatever other discounts apply, until their 25th birthday. If a care leaver lives with one other adult, a 25% discount applies instead.
  • Disability reduction: if a permanently disabled resident needs an extra room, an adapted bathroom or kitchen, or space for a wheelchair, the bill drops to the band below. Band A properties get a reduction of the same cash value.

Empty homes and second homes: a new premium from April 2026

This is the change most likely to catch someone out this year. Until now Test Valley charged a premium on homes empty and unfurnished for two years. From 1 April 2026 the trigger is one year, and second homes are caught for the first time. The rates in the council’s premium policy are:

  • Empty and unfurnished 1 to 5 years: 100% premium, so double the bill.
  • 5 to 10 years: 200% premium.
  • More than 10 years: 300% premium.
  • Second homes furnished for more than a year: 100% premium.

A property has to be occupied or furnished again for at least six weeks to reset the clock. There are nine national exception classes, including homes actively marketed for sale or let (12 months), annexes, job-related accommodation, occupied caravan pitches and boat moorings, seasonal homes that cannot legally be lived in year round, and empty homes undergoing major repairs (12 months).

Council tax support

Test Valley has replaced its working-age council tax support scheme for 2026/27. Until 2025/26 it closely followed the old Council Tax Benefit rules; the new scheme is a simplified income-band system.

Support is awarded at 90%, 70%, 50%, 30% or 10% of your bill depending on which weekly earnings band you fall into, with wider bands if you have children. For a single person with no children, the 90% band runs to £114.51 a week and support tapers out above £374.76.

  • The maximum is 90% for most people, so almost everyone pays something.
  • 100% support goes only to a protected group: claimants with no earned income who get the limited capability for work related activity element of Universal Credit, or the support component of Employment and Support Allowance.
  • Entitlement runs from the date you apply. Backdating of up to six months is possible but only with a good reason.
  • Pension-age residents are on the national scheme, which the council cannot change.

There is also an Exceptional Hardship Fund for people whose support does not cover their liability, or who get no support but are in real difficulty. It cannot be used for arrears from before 1 April 2025.

One thing to expect

Test Valley Borough Council was due to be abolished on 1 April 2028, with most of the borough joining a new Mid Hampshire Council. The government withdrew that decision on 7 September 2026 and is reviewing reorganisation nationally, with no end date. The May 2027 election will be an ordinary borough election.

Nothing about that changes your 2026/27 bill. For now, the six-way split on this page stays as it is.

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