How we source council tax data

Sources, by data slice

• England & Wales bands.Sourced from the Valuation Office Agency record at gov.uk/council-tax-bands. The VOA is the statutory body responsible for setting and maintaining bands in England and Wales.
• Scotland bands.Sourced from the Scottish Assessors Association portal at saa.gov.uk. The SAA represents Scottish Assessors who are statutorily responsible for council tax bands in Scotland.
• 2026/27 charges.Compiled from each local authority's published council tax schedule for 2026/27. Each council is the authoritative source for its own charges. The council page on this site links to the source schedule.
• Statutory exemptions and discounts.Single-person 25%, student exemption, disability band reduction and other adjustments are taken from gov.uk/council-tax statutory guidance.

Refresh discipline

Charges for 2026/27 are loaded from each local authority's published schedule, dated April 2026. Bands change rarely (re-band requests are individual and handled by VOA / SAA), so the band lookup tracks the authoritative record continuously rather than on a fixed cycle.

Where a council issues an in-year amendment to charges, the relevant page is updated to match. The footer of every page shows the last-verified date.

What we do not publish

• Aggregated "average" charges that obscure council variance. Council tax for the same band varies by hundreds of pounds between authorities. A national average misleads the reader; per-council charges are published instead.
• Predictions of future charges. Council tax is set annually by each authority. We do not publish forecasts beyond the current 2026/27 schedule.
• Council-tax-rebate-company sales pitches. The challenge process is described editorially based on VOA / SAA published guidance. We do not refer readers to paid challenge services and do not earn commission on rebate-company referrals.
• Personal data. The postcode lookup runs entirely in your browser. The postcode you enter is not transmitted, logged, or stored. Standard analytics (Google Analytics, page-view-level only) are used.

Editorial position

This site is operated by Digital Signet, an independent AI-development studio founded by Oliver Wakefield-Smith. We do not set bands, do not collect council tax, do not act for any local authority, and do not accept paid placements from the VOA, the Scottish Assessors Association, councils, or council-tax-rebate companies. See /about for the operator and the wider network.

Editorial direction is set by Oliver. Drafts are produced via Digital Signet's autonomous AI development methodology and reviewed against the editorial framework before publication.

Contact

For corrections, methodology questions, or scenarios that don't fit cleanly: oliver@digitalsignet.com.

For billing questions, contact your local authority directly. This site is not legal or financial advice; it is a reference for budgeting and sanity-checking.