Your council tax band vs your street
The single most persuasive sign your band is wrong is when your neighbours pay less for a similar home. Start with the open-data picture below — how your band sits against the whole band mix in your area — then run the free address check to see your actual neighbours, property by property.
Why the area view is only the start
The bars above use the Valuation Office (part of HMRC) band distribution for your whole local authority — a fair open-data proxy, but not your street. Two identical houses next door can sit in different bands, and that mismatch is exactly what wins a challenge. The free address check pulls the real per-address bands around you so you can see a genuine like-for-like comparison — the productised version of the classic neighbour check.
Follow the thread
Source: Valuation Office Agency council-tax band distributions, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The area view is aggregate open data; per-address bands come from the free address check.
The data behind this tool
Council tax bands cluster tightly by street: nationally 64.4% of homes are in bands A–C, so a single home in a higher band than its neighbours is the classic overbanding signal.
- Band A: 22.8% of homes in England & Wales.
- Band B: 19.6% of homes in England & Wales.
- Band C: 22% of homes in England & Wales.
- Band D: 15.8% of homes in England & Wales.
| Band | Properties | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Band A | 6,084,000 | 22.8% |
| Band B | 5,228,040 | 19.6% |
| Band C | 5,878,850 | 22% |
| Band D | 4,213,490 | 15.8% |
| Band E | 2,687,070 | 10.1% |
| Band F | 1,445,160 | 5.4% |
| Band G | 956,140 | 3.6% |
| Band H | 165,870 | 0.6% |
Source: Valuation Office Agency, Council Tax: challenges and changes in England and Wales, March 2024 (Open Government Licence v3.0).