People across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent are being asked a fairly simple question, how much more, if anything, they would be willing to pay for local police and fire services through council tax.
A public consultation has been launched ahead of budget decisions for the 2026 to 2027 financial year. It focuses on the police and fire precepts, the part of council tax that directly funds those services.
The options are set out using a Band D property, which is the standard measure used for council tax comparisons.
What is being proposed
For policing, residents are asked to choose between three options.
- No increase at all.
- An extra £10.93 a year, which works out at about 91p a month and matches the current national inflation rate.
- An extra £15 a year, around £1.25 a month. This would be a 5.2 per cent rise and is the maximum increase allowed by the government.
For fire and rescue services, the choices are similar but smaller in scale.
- No increase.
- An extra £3.49 a year, roughly 29p a month and again in line with inflation.
- An extra £5 a year, about 42p a month, which would be the maximum permitted rise.
You can support different options for police and fire rather than treating them as a single figure.
Why the question is being asked
According to the Staffordshire Commissioner for Police, Fire and Crime, setting the budget is becoming more difficult each year. He says government funding does not fully cover rising costs such as inflation, pay awards, and national policy decisions.
While ministers often talk about increased spending power for emergency services, the Commissioner says that, in practice, this relies heavily on council tax going up above inflation.
He says his preference would be not to raise council tax at all. However, he has warned that freezing the precept would mean real cuts to services and a reduction in their ability to keep people safe.
What current funding supports
As part of the consultation, the Commissioner has also pointed to what existing council tax funding is helping to deliver.
For Staffordshire Police, figures provided show a reported 13 per cent reduction in neighbourhood crime over the year to the end of September 2025, including a 24 per cent drop in home burglaries. Extra patrols over the summer targeted hotspot areas, with police reporting arrests made and reductions in knife crime in those locations. Investment has also gone into a victims’ online portal and into expanding public protection teams working with vulnerable children and adults.
For Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, demand has increased. Crews attended more than 5,400 incidents between April and September 2025, a rise linked to hot, dry weather and more small fires. Firefighters also carried out thousands of Safe and Well visits, and continue to work alongside the NHS on falls response and hospital discharge schemes for vulnerable residents.
These figures are presented by the Commissioner as examples of what council tax funding already supports, and what he says could be at risk if budgets do not keep pace with costs.
Have your say
The consultation is open to anyone living in Staffordshire or Stoke-on-Trent and takes only a few minutes to complete.
It runs until Monday 19 January, after which responses will be considered before the final budget is set.
Residents can take part online at
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/precept26-27
Whether you think the answer is no increase at all or a few extra pounds a year, this is the stage where views can still be fed in.
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