Do Londoners feel their council tax is good value?

With more than six million Londoners eligible to vote in the local elections on 7 May, many will be thinking about the services that their council provides.

For this week's programme, Politics London spoke to several people on the streets of the capital about their perception of council tax.

"It's absolutely extortionate. I mean, it goes up every year," one woman said. "I can't see any benefits from me paying all that money."

Another described it as "too expensive", adding: "Everything that you have to pay for is hard."

One man told Politics London: "I don't think it's great, to be honest with you. It keeps going up but nobody knows what it goes towards."

But it was not all negative. One woman said that she felt councils were "making an effort".

"I had issues with potholes in a particular area and that's being resolved," she said.

The majority of council tax goes to the local council to run services.

Another part goes to the Greater London Authority to fund capital-wide services including the London Fire Brigade and the Metropolitan Police.

The council services portion can include paying for rubbish collections, street lighting, libraries and youth clubs.

Boroughs also have housing responsibilities, from planning permission to tackling homelessness, and in many cases, above all else, council tax is used to fund social care.

"Councils are spending 70 to 80% of their budget on adult social care and children's services alone, and those are things that they have to do by law," said Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit.

"We've seen demand and cost go through the roof over the last decade and that creates a vicious circle that councils are really struggling to square off.

"Their costs go up as their income goes down.

"The hard reality is that for most councils that means they have little choice but to put council tax up by the maximum they're allowed to."

Council tax is one of the main sources of income for local councils.

While council tax varies from borough to borough, the average council tax for a Band D property across London is £2,068 this year.

That has risen by nearly £400 in the last five years.

With the current cost of living pressures, the way that money is spent will be on many people's minds as next month's election draws closer.

BBC London has produced a guide to every borough - from Havering in the east, to Hillingdon in the west - featuring facts, figures and the history of each area, along with election analysis from Prof Tony Travis of the London School of Economics.

You can find out more about your borough here.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk