Council Tax by Town: Full 2026 Rankings vs House Value

Burnley pays more council tax relative to the value of its homes than anywhere else in England. Westminster pays the least. That's the finding of a Mortgage Introducer analysis matching every English council's 2026-27 council tax bill against local house prices — and it's the same imbalance driving Downing Street's current push to reform the system.

The analysis combined the government's latest Band D council tax figures with house price data from the Office for National Statistics and HM Land Registry, matching all 296 English billing authorities' 2026-27 bills against average local house prices for March 2026. Burnley households pay the equivalent of 1.98% of their home's value in council tax each year — the highest ratio in the country. Durham (1.93%) and Hartlepool (1.88%) follow close behind. At the other end of the table, Westminster comes last of all 295 authorities with usable data, at 0.12%, with Kensington and Chelsea and Wandsworth also among the lowest.

The gap reflects a mismatch between two things that have moved at very different speeds: council tax bands, which are still fixed to 1991 property values, and actual house prices, which have diverged wildly by region since. Burnley's average house price is £128,826, according to the ONS/HM Land Registry UK House Price Index; Westminster's is £844,095. Yet the Band D council tax bill in Burnley (£2,549) is actually higher in cash terms than Westminster's (£1,050) — it's just being levied on a home worth a fraction as much.

The regional pattern is stark. Median council tax as a share of house price runs at 1.56% in the North East and 1.18% in the North West, against 0.64% in the South East and 0.41% in London — a roughly four-fold difference between the two ends of the country.

This is the same dynamic behind Andy Burnham's push to reform council tax, which Mortgage Introducer covered last week: a petition backed by the campaign group Fairer Share has passed 100,000 signatures and will be debated in Parliament, while the Prime Minister has suggested a land value tax or proportional property tax could shift more of the burden onto higher-value homes in the South. As Mortgage Introducer has reported, Burnham has called the current system "not justifiable" given how far bills in the North have drifted from what northern homes are actually worth.

For brokers, the practical relevance sits alongside — not instead of — the headline mortgage rate conversation. A client comparing a move from Burnley to Westminster, or vice versa, is not just comparing house prices; they're comparing a council tax bill that, relative to the property, is roughly 15 times larger in one location than the other. That gap shows up in affordability calculations and monthly outgoings long after the mortgage is agreed, and it's a factor some brokers say is already shaping how clients weigh up moving between regions.

Frequently asked questions

Full rankings: council tax as a % of house price, by local authority

The table below covers 295 of England's 296 billing authorities. The Isles of Scilly is the only exclusion, because the ONS does not publish a House Price Index estimate for it — sales volumes there are too low to produce a reliable figure.

Methodology and sources

Council tax figures are Band D rates for 2026-27 from MHCLG's Council Tax levels set by local authorities in England release (Table 9), matched to average house prices for March 2026 from the ONS/HM Land Registry UK House Price Index using each authority's official ONS area code, so the join is exact rather than name-matched. "Average house price" covers all property types and all buyer types.