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Has council tax really gone up? The evidence.

Has council tax really gone up? The evidence.

By Dan Neidle

November 24, 2025

Council tax is unpopular, not least to a perception that it’s relentlessly going up. But is that true? If we take inflation out of the numbers, and express everything in today’s money, has council tax actually gone up?

Did council tax bills go up?

Here’s the average Band D council tax for England, Wales and Scotland:

English council tax has doubled. Welsh council tax has gone up more than three times. Scottish council tax is largely unchanged.

We should, however, be careful when using the “average Band D” figure. That’s the official statistic, because Band D is the “benchmark” from which the other bands are calculated – but that doesn’t mean Band D reflects the average council tax. The mix of bands varies by local authority (thanks to the hopelessly out of date 1991 valuation basis). The raw “Band D” figure also ignores council tax support (a locally-managed discount for people on low incomes).

So if you are a household that pays council tax, without support, then the chart is probably a good guide to what you’ve actually experienced.

If we want a more general view, we can use the ONS figures for council tax receipts, and divide that by the ONS data for number of households. This gives us a measure of average council tax per household, across the UK:

We see a similar picture, with average council tax doubling.

Why did council tax increase?

Two reasons.

First, because central government funding declined. This chart from the IRS shows total council funding per capita in real terms (the blue line):

Second, because demographic change meant that the demand for social care greatly increased over this period. Councils are required by statute to provide this – so other services were cut:¹

So the ultimate answer is that local taxation has increased because councils have been required to take on the burgeoning cost of social care, and at the same time central Government funding has reduced. That’s in the wider context of overall taxation increasing, but the income tax and national insurance burden on the average worker having fallen. Probably fair to say that council tax rising is a consequence of tax not rising (for most people).

Photo by Tanya Barrow on Unsplash

Footnotes

Data is from Table 1 in this IFS report, Real-terms spending per person by service area, various years (2024–25 prices). ↩︎

10 responses to “Has council tax really gone up? The evidence.”

Susie Mortimore

November 26, 2025 12:10 pm

Are there any recent analyses you’ve come across on what’s going on in Northern Ireland?

Reply
1. Dan Neidle
  
  November 26, 2025 12:21 pm
  
  sorry, nothing…
  
  Reply
Anna Clarke

November 26, 2025 10:51 am

You state that council tax spending has increased on social care due to demographic change – but the chart shows no increase in the proportion of spending on *adult* social care (which is mostly older people) and an increase on child social care – this can’t be due to demographic change, as we haven’t got a growing proportion of children in our population.

Reply
zak

November 25, 2025 8:54 pm

It seems kinda of insane that spending on 5 out of the 9 categories is down by 44% or more!

Reply
Nick

November 25, 2025 1:00 pm

I make Scottish council tax up in real terms by 22.5% over the period you chart. That seems an unusually elastic use of the phrase “largely unchanged”.

Reply
Arthur Dyer

November 24, 2025 3:48 pm

the VOA processes to challenge council tax are fairly broken. There is a compounding issue in the the LA and VOA are constantly nudging properties upwards into higher bands, in my neighbourhood our street faces the issue that incorrect comparable from a far more valuable street adjacent has been used to create incorrect increased values. The process to challenge this takes a long time and lots of deliberately incorrect information is handed to residents from the VOA to make you want to quit the challenge process.
For example incorrect guidance is pointed to, incorrectly interpreted, when used in Tribunals they dismiss the guidance stating its out of date – when the VOA officers are the ones providing the infomation. In my street case our properties are being compared to houses worth 5-6mn and flats worth 2-3mn whilst there are direct comparables on the same post code that are Band A directly across the st.

Reply
Tigs

November 24, 2025 3:35 pm

Thanks Dan. I can’t see how this statement is necessarily correct: “local taxation has increased because national taxation has not increased”.
I am quite happy to believe that local taxation has increased.
I have no idea whether “national taxation” has not increased. I assume it has increased because the experts keeps saying that tax as a share of GDP has increased (e.g. it was something like 27% in 1993 and is now expected to be over 37% in a few years) – https://obr.uk/box/the-uks-tax-burden-in-historical-and-international-context
But even if it has not increased, isn’t the issue because (as you mention) “central government funding declined”. Any government could have chosen to increase central funding, regardless of whether “national taxation” has increased.

Reply
1. Dan Neidle
  
  November 24, 2025 4:59 pm
  
  you’re quite right – I’ll tighten that!
  
  Reply
Stephen B

November 24, 2025 3:28 pm

I agree that 1991 values are out of date, but that would not matter if all valuations are similarly affected. Is there evidence that that is not the case. A cursory review of data at the land registry suggests there are not major differences in house price indeces for different types of property within a particular geographic region.

Reply
1. Dan Neidle
  
  November 25, 2025 11:04 am
  
  there is a *pile* of evidence – see https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/analysis-shows-why-council-tax-reform-could-be-incredibly-difficult
  
  Reply