A Westminster bulky waste collection goes from £36 to £41 in April 2027, and parking rises 3.5% from March. Cabinet approved the new fees on 2 November.
A Westminster bulky waste collection will cost £41 instead of £36 from April 2027. Paid-for parking goes up by a base 3.5% from March. Most other council fees rise by between 3.3% and 5%.
Westminster City Council’s Cabinet approved the new fees and charges on Monday 2 November. The council expects them to bring in about £4.1m a year in extra income. (Cabinet decision)
What changes, and when
The council’s Cabinet report sets different start dates for different services:
- 1 December 2026: register office fees, including weddings and ceremonies, up by an average of 5%.
- 1 January 2027: events and filming fees, up by an average of 5%.
- 1 March 2027: paid-for parking and parking permits, a base rise of 3.5%.
- 1 April 2027: almost everything else.
The report says the starting point this year was the 3.3% pay award for council staff, rather than the inflation rate. Staff are the biggest cost in most services. September’s CPI inflation was 3.5%.
The charges residents pay most
| Charge | Now | From April 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Bulky waste collection, standard charge | £36 | £41 |
| Bulky waste, each extra item | £6.40 | £7.40 |
| Adult swim, full price | £9.35 | £9.65 |
| Adult swim, resident card | £3.20 | £3.30 |
| Adult gym session, full price | £11.40 | £11.75 |
| Adult gym session, resident card | £8.00 | £8.25 |
| Adult swimming lesson, 45 minutes | £15.10 | £15.10 (frozen) |
| Pimlico Library large meeting room, per hour | £100 | £105 |
Sources: the council’s long list of fees and its leisure price list.
The bulky waste rise is 14% on the standard charge and 16% on each extra item. The council says it can charge for collecting bulky items but not for disposing of them, so it “can never truly achieve full cost recovery”. Collections stay free for residents on Housing Benefit or Council Tax Support, as our bulky waste guide explains. The price list describes the standard charge as covering six items in one column and five in another, so check the count when you book.
Leisure centres
Leisure prices go up by an average of 2.8%, less than most services. Swimming lessons and health and wellbeing sessions are frozen “to maintain accessibility for priority groups”. Juniors and seniors with a resident card still swim free.
The report says the staff and resident discount “will reduce by £2”. It does not say which price that applies to. Veterans are being added to the discounted membership scheme. Our leisure centres page lists every centre.
Parking
The base rate for paid-for parking rises 3.5%, with extra adjustments to the bands that charge more for higher-emission vehicles. The council has not published the new hourly rates by zone with the report.
Parking is the biggest single source of the extra money: £2.387m a year from pay-to-park, plus £140,000 from resident permits and £50,000 from trade permits. The report says parking transactions are up 1.4%. It also says higher charges support the council’s climate and air quality emergency declarations by managing traffic. Today’s prices are in our pay to park guide.
After parking, the biggest gains in a full year, from section 6 of the report, are:
- commercial waste, £716,000
- the code of practice charges on building sites and road works, £350,000, which the report says will only reduce an existing £1.15m shortfall
- the register office, £203,000
- discretionary planning fees, £185,000
- Sayer’s Croft, £125,000
- building control, £73,000
- events and filming, £69,000
Other changes
- HMO licences: the fee for a house in multiple occupation licence, now £1,540, is proposed to rise by 24.03% when the council starts its next five-year licensing scheme. That would take it to about £1,910. The report says the rise builds five years of inflation into the fee.
- Graves: cemetery fees rise 3.3% for residents and 6.9% for non-residents. A new Class I grave at East Finchley goes from £3,100 to £3,202.30 for a resident, and from £7,700 to £8,231.30 for a non-resident.
- Sayer’s Croft: prices at the council’s Surrey outdoor education centre rise by an average of 6.8%. The discount for Westminster school groups falls from 43% to 40%.
- Commercial waste: up 3%, worth £716,000 a year.
- Public toilets: unchanged, at £1 for the refurbished West End toilets and 50p for the automatic ones. Toilets in residential areas stay free.
- New charges: a pre-application fee for highways work, a charge to recover the cost of household waste bin rental (about £13,000 a year), and a 3% developer and client cost charge. Libraries gain a new £10 maximum on long overdue fines and a £12 an hour work pod at Paddington Library.
Licensing fees are set separately. The report says the Licensing Committee meets in January 2027, with a planned 3% rise. Parking fines are set across London and are not expected to change in 2027/28.
The report gives the full-year gain as £4.135m in its summary and £4.156m in its background section. The new fees will be built into the budget that goes to Full Council in March 2027.
What it means for you
- Book a bulky collection before April if you have a load waiting. It is £5 cheaper now.
- Weddings booked from 1 December will be priced on the new register office fees. Bookings already made keep the price agreed at the time, the report says.
- Parking goes up from 1 March 2027. The new zone rates were not published with the report.
- Leisure: resident card prices rise by about 3% on most sessions, so a swim goes up 10p. Lessons stay the same.
The council is also cutting about 520 jobs to save money, and its Cabinet approved the wider programme behind those cuts at the same meeting. Our job cuts story has the detail.
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