Cardiff Council Tax 2026

How to read this stock pattern

Here the standard Band D benchmark and the most common property group point to the same part of the distribution. That makes Cardiff less sensitive than most authorities to the familiar criticism that Band D is merely a reference property. The stock-weighted amount is still useful: it incorporates the lower and upper bands instead of treating the modal group as the whole area. It should be read as a corpus comparison, not as the bill of a particular address.

Cardiff has a broad valuation-band profile: the largest 3 groups are needed before the cumulative share passes half of the stock. No single band dominates the local picture, which makes a one-band headline especially incomplete. The weighted result is useful for comparing this authority with peers, but the spread across 9 published bands matters just as much. A broad mix also means the area-level mean is less representative of any one household than it is in a concentrated council.

Cardiff occupies the middle half of the Wales stock-weighted distribution, below its £2,258.00 median. The regional result gives more context than a UK-wide rank without turning the difference into a superlative. It also shows that the council's band mix, not only its published Band D rate, determines where it sits among nearby authorities. The remaining distance from the median is an area-level comparison rather than a household saving or premium.

Closest housing-stock shape: Vale of Glamorgan

Vale of Glamorgan is the nearest available full-distribution peer for Cardiff, although the match is not tight. Aligning the two published profiles would require 8.2% of dwellings to move between valuation bands. Even the closest council therefore has a materially different housing-stock shape.

Four largest band differences

• The largest separation falls on the reference band itself. Band D contains 22.4% of Cardiff's stock but 19.1% of Vale of Glamorgan's, so the national headline describes more of the local distribution here.
• Another material separation is an upper-band difference at Band G. Vale of Glamorgan records 9.5% of dwellings there, compared with 6.4% in Cardiff, so the peer carries more of its stock at that higher rung.
• Another material separation sits at lower Band C, where Vale of Glamorgan holds 23.3% of its stock and Cardiff holds 20.9%. The peer is more bottom-weighted at this rung of the valuation list.
• A smaller distinction is an upper-band difference at Band H. Vale of Glamorgan records 3.6% of dwellings there, compared with 1.7% in Cardiff, so the peer carries more of its stock at that higher rung.

How the wider profile compares

Show every band direction

• Band A leans toward Cardiff
• Band B leans toward Cardiff
• Band C leans toward Vale of Glamorgan
• Band D leans toward Cardiff
• Band E leans toward Cardiff
• Band F leans toward Cardiff
• Band G leans toward Vale of Glamorgan
• Band H leans toward Vale of Glamorgan
• Band I leans toward Vale of Glamorgan

This sequence is read from the lowest published band to the highest.

Other close Wales matches for Cardiff: Powys (9.1% redistribution distance); Ceredigion (10.1% redistribution distance); Flintshire (12.8% redistribution distance); Pembrokeshire (12.9% redistribution distance). Ranked across every published band in the Wales valuation system, this shortlist shows whether Vale of Glamorgan stands alone or sits in a cluster of similarly shaped authorities.