A parish in west Kent is charging residents more than half a million pounds for its share of council tax – the highest in the borough.

As bills land on people's doormats this month, they will be asked to pay towards the county and borough councils, police and fire and rescue service.

One element that is often overlooked is the amount that residents will pay for the work done by their local parish or town council.

This year, eight parishes in Tonbridge and Malling are precepting for sums of more than £140,000, with Kings Hill Parish Council at the top of the leader board. £500,000.

It is requesting £552,847 from its residents, which for the "average" Band D house equates to £123 a year.

Larger parishes need more money than smaller parishes, and they also have more homes to divide the bill between, so a fairer comparison is to look at the Band D figure.

That drops Kings Hill down to third place, and reveals Ditton Parish Council as having the highest bill per head – at £125 per household.

Borough Green comes in second place at £138.78 per Band D household.

Ditton's key areas of expenditure are running the village's community centre, which costs more than £54,000 net of income, maintaining its open spaces which costs more than £166,000 of which more than £89,000 is in salaries, and the general administration of the council that adds another £166,000.

However, it does make a small profit of around £16,000 on the two bars that it runs at the community centre.

Kings Hill as well as running its own community centre is playing it safe this year.

It has budgeted to add more than £23,000 to its reserves as well as setting aside a "contingency fund" of £105,000 for any projects that it chooses to undertake in the coming year that it hasn't yet identified.

It is also budgeting for £25,000 of "free resources" for items such as making community grants and funding the Christmas lights.

A spokesman for Ditton Parish Council said: "Ditton has a great deal of open space within its boundary – we have two recreation grounds, a nature reserve and large village green – resulting in far fewer properties and less dense housing than say our neighbours at East Malling & Larkfield, Snodland or Aylesford.

"This means that Ditton has fewer council tax payers to share the costs and this is why the Ditton rate is unfortunately higher than in neighbouring parishes."

She said: "In fact we have fewer homes now than we did in 2010 as we were subjected to a boundary review in 2011 resulting in Ditton losing 300 properties to East Malling & Larkfield.

"Historically circumstances have prevailed against parish councils generally, and in some respects against Ditton in particular.

"In 1990/91 the business rate from all commercial businesses in the parish, which up until that time was paid to the parish councils, was diverted directly to the government and still is to this day.

"This resulted, at that time in an income loss of about £50,000 which, equated to 50% of the total income.

"At the same time the rate relief for the community centre was withdrawn, resulting in a business rate rise from £6,260 to £14,620.

"This meant a loss of income to Ditton parish totalling £64,620 in that year.

"These losses have had to be made up each year ever since through council tax increases and greater income from the use of facilities.

"The parish council is very aware that everyone is on a tight budget and it has endeavoured to keep its parish rate increases to a minimum in recent years – 0.3% in 2021/22, 0.63% in 2022/23 and 0.5% in this coming financial year, which equates to an increase of 76p per Band D property for the whole year."