Comment on the City’s amended draft budget for 2025-2026

Amended Draft Budget 2025/26

The City is grateful to all who commented on the City's tabled 2025/26 Draft Budget during the public participation process.

Following thorough consideration of all the input we received, we are proposing several key amendments, including:

• Extending the ‘first R450 000 rates-free’ benefit to all homes up to R7 million property valuation (up from R5m).
• More pensioners to benefit by raising qualifying threshold to R27 000 monthly income per household (up from R22 000), regardless of property value, SA’s widest criteria for pensioner support.

• Reduction in Water fixed charges for property value bands between R1m and R25m compared to the March tabled draft budget (a R110m reduction in revenue).
• As with the March 2025/26 draft budget, fixed charges to be linked to property value as the only sustainable way to fund critical infrastructure and stable service delivery.
• Close to 200 000 homes under R2,5m will pay less fixed charges for Water and Sanitation overall in the draft budget 2025/26, compared to what they would have paid on the connection size system, with higher value homes generally paying more.

• Reducing City-wide Cleaning charges for all residential properties under R20m compared to the tabled March 2025/26 budget.
• The City-Wide Cleaning pensioner rebate now included in the amended draft budget 2025/26.

• Residential tariff proposals remain the same as the March 2025/26 tabled draft budget. This includes electricity price relief via the discontinuing of the 10% cost embedded in electricity prices as a contribution to the city-wide cleaning and other services.
• As a result of this electricity price relief, it will cost less to consume electricity in the draft budget 2025/26 than it does currently for Domestic and Home Users.
• The City considered the call of a petition to raise electricity prices instead of a City-Wide Cleaning Tariff. Modelling showed this proposal would negatively impact on households, and that reducing the tariff was a better alternative.

Compared to the tabled budget, the above relief measures will lead to lower total monthly bills approximately as follows:

• R1, 2 million home: up to 15% lower
• R2 million home: up to 24% lower
• R3 – R4 million homes: up to 33% lower
• R5 – 7 million homes: up to 40% lower
• Pensioner rebate beneficiaries will experience even greater relief than the above.

• City to give this customer base more time to adapt to the envisaged phased-introduction of a ring-fenced charge for city-wide cleaning. In the draft budget 2025/26, commercial customers are foreseen to contribute to city-wide cleaning service funding via a percentage of electricity sales revenue as with previous financial years.

• Invested in Hope budget to boost Cape Town with a record R40 bn infrastructure investment, alongside major investments in a safer and cleaner Cape Town.
• There are no non-urgent major capital projects that can be rephased, all are critical to deliver reliable water, sanitation, electricity, roads and other infrastructure.
• Cape Town cannot follow the route of decline so evident in all other major towns and cities in South Africa - investment for service delivery and economic growth are key factors that will ensure Cape Town remains the City of Hope.
• Cape Town has the widest social relief and lower income protection net of any city in South Africa.
• It has the lowest monthly bills of any city in South Africa despite better services and more social relief measures. This is based on a comparative analysis of monthly bills for all metros as per tabled budgets for the 2025/26 financial year.

• Amended Draft Budget Advert (English | Afrikaans)
• The City’s draft Budget 2025/2026 documents - please see Annexure 6 for proposed tariffs
• What is a budget and how does it work?
• Rates calculator (For residential properties only)

Comment period

Submit your comments from 28 May - 13 June 2025.

Submit your comment

You may submit your comments or representations via the following channels:

Online: Submit your comments online via the "Comment" button

Email: Email your written comments to Budget.Comments@capetown.gov.za.

Delivery: Deliver your comments by hand to your nearest Subcouncil office 

For verbal comments, call 0800 212 176.