Epping Forest 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 Epping Forest 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.

Epping Forest 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 8 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.

Epping Forest sits in the upper quarter of East of England on the stock-weighted ordering, above the regional median of £2,255.65. This narrows the comparison from a UK rank to authorities facing the same broad regional context, while still correcting each one for its different band mix. The placement says the council's average published stock is relatively costly within that peer set; it does not convert the mean into an individual household charge.

Closest housing-stock shape: Brentwood

Brentwood is the closest full-distribution match for Epping Forest. The profiles are close rather than identical: 3.1% of dwellings would need to shift between valuation bands for their published shares to align. The comparison therefore tests the whole ladder, not just the largest band.

Four largest band differences

• The largest separation is lower on the ladder at Band A: Epping Forest has 3.6% of dwellings there, against 1.9% in Brentwood. That extra lower-band weight pulls its stock profile away from the peer.
• A smaller distinction is lower on the ladder at Band C: Epping Forest has 20.6% of dwellings there, against 19.6% in Brentwood. That extra lower-band weight pulls its stock profile away from the peer.
• A smaller distinction is at reference Band D: its share is 24.2% in Epping Forest and 25.1% in Brentwood. The familiar benchmark represents a larger slice of the peer's housing stock.
• A smaller distinction is an upper-band difference at Band F. Brentwood records 13.0% of dwellings there, compared with 12.2% in Epping Forest, 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 Epping Forest
• Band B is closely balanced
• Band C leans toward Epping Forest
• Band D leans toward Brentwood
• Band E leans toward Brentwood
• Band F leans toward Brentwood
• Band G leans toward Brentwood
• Band H is closely balanced

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

Other close England matches for Epping Forest: Horsham (3.7% redistribution distance); Wandsworth (4.3% redistribution distance); Camden (4.8% redistribution distance); Barnet (5.0% redistribution distance). Ranked across every published band in the England valuation system, this shortlist shows whether Brentwood stands alone or sits in a cluster of similarly shaped authorities.