What your Council Tax is used for

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Your council tax and where it goes

Adur District Council and Worthing Borough Council are in charge of collecting council tax each year not only on behalf of themselves but also for West Sussex County Council, the Office of the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner (OSPCC), Lancing Parish Council and Sompting Parish Council.

Although it's our name at the top of the bills our residents receive, we actually only get a relatively small proportion of the money to spend.

How it works

The councillors on each council set the charge, called the precept, that the residents in their area must pay for the year ahead. We add these up, along with the amount being charged by the OSPCC, and send out individual bills to every household in Adur and Worthing.

The value of your home decides which council tax band you are in and how much you must pay, including any discounts you might get.

In Worthing for 2024/25, the average Band D home's total council tax charge is £2,235.52. In Adur the average is £2,301.58, but the actual amount due varies because people living in Sompting and Lancing also receive services from their parish council that they fund.

How the money gets divided

For 2024/25, the West Sussex County Council precept for a Band D home is £1,714.95. The OSPCC charge for the same home is £252.91. The Worthing Borough Council charge is £267.66.

That means that the county council gets almost 77% of the total bill for a household. The OSPCC share is roughly 11%. The Worthing charge is roughly 12% of the bill, and is the equivalent of just £5.15 per week.

In Adur, residents pay the same amount as Worthing residents to the county council and the OSPCC. Lancing Parish Council charges £51.84 per year and Sompting Parish Council £35.64 per year. Residents in Sompting, Shoreham, Southwick and Coombes also pay an extra charge to maintain recreation grounds and community buildings. The average Band D charge for a household from Adur District Council comes to £333.72. This Adur charge makes up less than 15% of the total bill and is the equivalent of just £6.42 per week.

So who does what?

West Sussex County Council oversees the provision of education across 286 schools in the county. It manages all adopted roads in West Sussex other than the A27, A23 and M23, including repairing potholes, building and maintaining cycle paths and giving permission for roadworks and some road closures. Income from on-road parking fees and penalty notices goes to the county council. It is also responsible for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service and provides services including social care, libraries, trading standards, economic development and support for refugees and asylum seekers.

West Sussex County Council website
- Finance and budgets - on the West Sussex County Council website

The Office of the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner (OSPCC) oversees Sussex Police, which is responsible for maintaining public safety and preventing crime across Adur and Worthing.

NHS Sussex, Sussex Partnership, South East Coast Ambulance Service and University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust are some of the organisations responsible for keeping the people of Adur and Worthing healthy, and for helping them when they are unwell. They run our hospitals, mental health units, GP surgeries, community nursing and ambulance services.

Among the things Adur District Council and Worthing Borough Council are responsible for are:

the management of our parks and open spaces
the seafront
waste and recycling collection
burial grounds and Worthing Crematorium
the planning service
street cleaning
council tax collection
support for the homeless and those in need of housing
off-road parking
public toilets

Lancing Parish Council manages Beach Green and Widewater Lagoon, including the car parks and beach huts there. It is also responsible for recreation grounds, pocket gardens and play areas in Lancing.

Sompting Parish Council manages the Harriet Johnson Centre, planters and floral displays in the village and bus shelters.

Funding for council services

For 2024/25, there are 28,390 households in Adur and 50,745 households in Worthing that are due to pay council tax.

In total, they are due to pay almost £7.5m for Adur District Council to run services this year and around £10.5m to Worthing Borough Council. On top of this, the councils get funding from the government each year in grants and a share of business rates. For 2024/25, Adur has been given around £3.7m and Worthing around £4.6m.

In addition, the councils borrow money and invest it in buildings and other assets, to earn income to help pay for services. They also collect income from fees and charges such as off-road parking, holding private events on council land and renting out beach huts.

We expect this to contribute around £11.2m in 2024/25 for Adur and around £25.3m for Worthing.

In total then, Adur District Council has a budget of just over £22.4m to pay for services for 2024/25, while Worthing Borough Council has a budget of £40.4m.

Our spending

Each year we send out with our council tax bills a leaflet that explains how we spend our money for the community. The chart below shows what services the councils spend money on.

Between the two councils we spend around £6.17m per year on collecting rubbish, recycling, food waste, old electrical items and garden waste, as well as cleaning our streets. This works out at:

51p per household each week to collect their waste and recycling
50p per household each week to clean our roads

This year we're also planning to spend £3.7m maintaining and improving our parks, open spaces and coastline. This includes nine Green Flag parks and more than 50 other greens, recreation grounds, parks and open spaces. This works out at:

67p per household per week on our parks and green spaces
Almost 23p per household per week on maintaining our coastline, beaches and beach huts

We spend the largest share of our funding on housing. This includes supporting families who lose their home and making sure everyone in Adur and Worthing has a roof over their head.

The increasing cost of living has affected the least well off in our communities the most, so unfortunately our housing bill is increasing every year. For 2024/25, we're spending just over £10m on this vital service.

Expenditure information leaflets: