Live in Windsor and you can consider yourself more fortunate than most as you will pay about £1,700 a year in council tax for a Band D property. In Newbury you will be charged nearly £600 more a year.
With council tax receipts making up a major chunk of any council’s budget, this has left the Royal Borough desperately short of funds.
It has already raised this year’s council tax bills by 8.99% and, while it has been given permission to raise them than by more than the usual 5% again for the next two years, we don’t know just how much more the council will want to charge.
Two things we do know though.
One, the Royal Borough says that any extra cash it does bring in through higher bills will not be enough to balance out the estimated £29m funding shortfall it currently faces.
Two, the borough also says that some of the extra money it does manage to bring in over the next two years is likely to end up going to other councils in poorer areas of the country anyway.
As for exactly how much more council tax people in Windsor and Maidenhead will have to cough up in the next two years, we are unlikely to have an answer to that for a few weeks yet.
Back in January, the council said it wanted to raise people’s bills by as much as 25% to help cover its costs.
The government quickly put paid to that with the borough settling on the lower figure of 8.99% instead.
Crystal ball anyone?