The next financial year is coming up and that means new Council tax bills are here.

A small portion (approximately 5%) of the Council tax paid by Cholsey residents goes to the Parish Council. For 2024/2025, that portion is £112.18 for a ‘Band D’ property – so around £2 per week. The equivalent figure for 2023/2024 was £106.03.

What does the Parish Council spend money on?

Most costs incurred by the Parish Council are covered via the Council tax as we do not have other significant sources of income (with the exception of CIL; more on this below). The total amount of money that a Town or Parish Council receives via the Council tax is called the annual ‘Precept’. Because Cholsey Parish Council requests an annual precept of above £140,000, details of our expenditure are published on the SODC web site here:

Where your council tax goes – South Oxfordshire District Council (southoxon.gov.uk)

As you can see we have a variety of costs associated with the work we do in the village. These include:

• Employing five part-time staff members, who carry out a variety of roles including clerking, management of projects, estates and finances. We’ve recently published our 2024-2029 Strategic Plan which will help guide our work going forward.
• Team members include the Environmental Coordinator who oversees the Cholsey Environmental Champion (CHEC) groups.
• We provide a significant donation to a community CIC to help fund employment of the Happy Hub Children’s Centre team and a Mental Health Support Worker.
• The Council manages the recreation ground including play areas, skatepark and outdoor gym, The Forty including the war memorial, three allotment sites in the village, burials in the village cemetery and three community defibrillators.
• We maintain the Cholsey Neighbourhood Plan which is important for guiding development of the village.
• We own the Pavilion building, and have provided grants to a variety of services and events including the Community Library, HortSoc Village Show, Bonfire night, Citizen’s Advice Bureau and Home-Start.
• The Council usually meets every three weeks – you can find agendas and past minutes on the Meetings page of the Council web site. These give a sense of the varied things we are involved in.

Become a Councillor and help make a difference to our wonderful village!

Cholsey Parish Councillors are unpaid representatives of the community, working to benefit residents in the present and for the future.

We want to be an active part of the community, to listen to resident’s views, and to drive positive changes wherever we can. If you would like to find out more about becoming a Councillor please get in touch!

More on CIL

CIL – the Community Infrastructure Levy – has also been a source of funding for the Council. We receive a proportion of the CIL payment that land-owners or developers are required to pay when new developments are built in Cholsey. CIL money is intended to help local authorities, including Town and Parish Councils, respond to the demands that new developments place on an area.

In recent years, CIL money has been used by Cholsey Parish Council to fund the skatepark in the recreation ground and the Children’s Centre extension to the Pavilion. In 2023, CIL funds were used to install an outdoor gym at the Recreation Ground and to replace the broken footbridge over Cholsey Brook to the Millennium Woods.