How we source council tax data
Council tax data has three authoritative sources in the UK, and we use each one for the slice it is authoritative on. This page describes the sources, the refresh discipline, and what we do not publish.
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.Taken directly from the three statutory registries, one per nation, and nothing else. England: MHCLG, ‘Council Tax levels set by local authorities in England: 2026 to 2027’ (accredited official statistics, published 25 March 2026), Table 9 for the area charge by band and Table 10 for the precept split, tax base and parish counts. Wales: Welsh Government, ‘Council Tax levels: April 2026 to March 2027’ (24 March 2026). Scotland: Scottish Government, ‘Council Tax Datasets: Council Tax by band 2026-27’ (updated 31 March 2026). All three are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Between them they cover every billing authority in England, Wales and Scotland, 350 in total. The figures are parsed from the published spreadsheets by a script, and every parsed value is checked back against the published cell text before it ships, so no figure on this site is typed in by hand. Northern Ireland is not covered because it charges domestic rates rather than council tax. Council pages should still be cross-checked against your own bill before budgeting on a specific figure, because parish and community precepts vary within an area.
- 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
The charge data is rebuilt from the three registries once a year, when each nation publishes its new tables in late March. The rebuild is a script, not a manual pass: it re-downloads the published spreadsheets, re-parses them, and re-checks every parsed figure against the published cell text, so a mistyped number cannot reach a page. Bands themselves 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 nation revises its published tables in year, the rebuild picks the revision up. Each council page names the registry its figures came from, the licence, and the date that registry was published. Always cross-check against your own bill before budgeting on a specific figure.
What we do not publish
- Aggregated charges as a substitute for the per-council figure. National Band D averages (England £2,392, Wales £2,283 for 2026/27, from MHCLG and gov.wales) are shown on the homepage for context, but council tax varies by hundreds of pounds between authorities for the same band. The budget-relevant figure is your specific council's charge, not the national mean.
- 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. 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 Digital Signet's editor. 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.