Bendigo Council Reveals How Rating Review Will Impact Your 2028 Bills

The City of Greater Bendigo is conducting its four-yearly review of its Revenue and Rating Plan, the document that determines how property rates are calculated, who qualifies for hardship concessions, and how council allocates income across services from road maintenance to community health programs. The review affects every ratepayer in the municipality, roughly 47,000 properties across urban Bendigo, Marong, Heathcote and surrounding townships, and must be completed before the council adopts its 2026-27 annual budget in final form under the requirements of the Local Government Act 2020 (Vic).

The timing matters. Victoria's local governments are operating under sustained cost pressures. The Municipal Association of Victoria has noted that infrastructure backlogs across regional councils widened significantly between 2022 and 2025, driven by construction inflation that at its peak ran above 12 per cent annually. For Bendigo specifically, the council's own long-term financial plan flagged in 2024 that the gap between what is needed to maintain existing assets and what current rate revenue can fund sits at approximately $18 million per year. Community advocates point out that any decision to hold rates down must be weighed against that maintenance deficit, while cost-of-living pressures mean households are watching rate notices closely.

What the review means for residents day to day

Local government policy analysts say the most immediate question for Bendigo residents is whether the council retains its current differential rating structure, which applies separate rate levels to residential, commercial, industrial and farm land. Under the existing plan, residential properties pay a lower rate-in-the-dollar than commercial properties, a common arrangement across Victorian councils designed to reflect the higher turnover and profit-generating capacity of business land. Any adjustment to those differentials shifts the tax burden between property categories and feeds directly into household bills or business operating costs.

Hardship provisions are the other flashpoint. The current plan includes a deferral option for low-income ratepayers who meet the State Revenue Office's concession criteria, but community legal advocates have flagged that uptake remains low because the application process is not well publicised. The review is expected to consider whether the council should run active outreach campaigns, particularly in lower-income pockets of the municipality including parts of Eaglehawk and Kangaroo Flat. For residents in those areas, a successful deferral application can mean hundreds of dollars staying in household budgets during the financial year.

Waste and recycling charges, which are typically levied as a separate service rate on top of general rates, are also under examination. The council's 2025-26 budget showed the kerbside collection contract cost rising to $11.4 million, up from $9.8 million the previous year, partly reflecting the transition to a new Food Organics and Garden Organics service that rolls out progressively to more Bendigo suburbs through 2026. Policy analysts say service charges of this kind are increasingly visible to residents because they appear as distinct line items on rate notices, making it easier to link council decisions to household costs.

Data, evidence and what comes next

The Victorian Government's own Productivity and Regulatory Reform unit found in a 2024 review of local government finances that regional councils with populations between 100,000 and 150,000, a category that includes Greater Bendigo, face the sharpest tension between rate-capping constraints and infrastructure demand. The state's rate cap for 2026-27 is set at 2.75 per cent, the figure the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal recommended to the minister earlier this year. That cap limits how much council can raise total general rate revenue, meaning efficiency decisions and service prioritisation carry more weight than in years when higher increases were permitted.

Council is required under the Local Government Act 2020 to consult the community before adopting a revised Revenue and Rating Plan. Public submissions are the formal mechanism, and local government observers note that participation in those processes in Bendigo has historically been modest, typically drawing fewer than 200 written submissions even on contentious proposals. Residents who want to influence the outcome, whether on rate levels, concession access or service charge transparency, have a defined window to do so before the plan is locked in. The council is projected to table the revised plan for adoption at its August 2026 ordinary meeting, after which the settings will flow directly into rate notices issued from September.