Highest Band D Council Tax 2026-27

Rank UK authorities by published 2026-27 Band D Council Tax using the official national releases for England, Scotland, and Wales.

Research period:

Compiled by PlainCouncilTax on 2026-05-17
Dorset Council: £2,765.02

Dorset Council sets the highest council-set Band D Council Tax in the UK for 2026-27 at £2,765.02, ahead of Lewes (£2,756.17), about 18% above the UK average of £2,337. Band D is the council-set reference rate; every other band is charged as a fixed statutory proportion of it.

Research question

Across the United Kingdom, which billing authorities set the highest Band D Council Tax charge for the 2026-27 financial year, and how does the top of the distribution compare to lower-charging councils?

Methodology

Every numeric value on this page is pulled live from PlainCouncilTax's current dataset and ranked accordingly, no figure is hardcoded, and the ranking refreshes automatically whenever the underlying source agency dataset is updated.

Band D charges are the headline rate each billing authority sets for the 2026-27 financial year, sourced from MHCLG (England), the Scottish Government, and Welsh Government / StatsWales. Councils that publish no Band D figure, or where a value is suppressed, are excluded rather than shown as zero. Rankings, averages and year-on-year changes are our own analysis of that source data, distinct from the publishers' own figures.

This page is compiled automatically from the live database; it is not reviewed by a named editor. Every value can be traced to its council via the source link and the methodology page, and a corrected figure is fixed at source so every affected page updates on the next rebuild.

See the methodology page for the full source vintage and refresh history.

Top 20 UK Councils by Band D Council Tax 2026-27

Live data, updates automatically when the source dataset is refreshed

1. Dorset Council2,765.022. Lewes2,756.173. City of Nottingham2,755.394. Rutland2,737.585. Wealden2,728.436. Gateshead2,715.817. Bristol2,713.688. West Devon2,705.339. Rother2,700.9510. Newark & Sherwood2,682.111. Oxford2,678.412. Hastings2,676.5813. Liverpool2,673.5914. Mid Devon2,656.4115. Eastbourne2,654.2816. Bassetlaw2,644.9517. Rushcliffe2,643.2718. Teignbridge2,643.1219. North Devon2,642.2120. Pendle2,640.18

Distribution context: minimum, average and maximum across the full sample

The top-10 ranking above sits against the wider population, these anchors situate the top values.

1. Maximum2,765.022. Top-10 median2,678.43. Average2,337.1524. Minimum1,028.21

The ranked top 20

Every row below reflects PlainCouncilTax's current dataset (20 rows shown). When the source is refreshed, this table updates automatically.

# Council Band D 2026-27 (£) YoY change (%) Country Region
1 Dorset Council 2,765.02 5.12 England South West
2 Lewes 2,756.17 4.9 England South East
3 City of Nottingham 2,755.39 3.73 England East Midlands
4 Rutland 2,737.58 2.49 England East Midlands
5 Wealden 2,728.43 4.6 England South East
6 Gateshead 2,715.81 5.33 England North East
7 Bristol 2,713.68 5.02 England South West
8 West Devon 2,705.33 5.09 England South West
9 Rother 2,700.95 5.45 England South East
10 Newark & Sherwood 2,682.1 3.87 England East Midlands
11 Oxford 2,678.4 4.74 England South East
12 Hastings 2,676.58 4.79 England South East
13 Liverpool 2,673.59 4.99 England North West
14 Mid Devon 2,656.41 5.36 England South West
15 Eastbourne 2,654.28 4.81 England South East
16 Bassetlaw 2,644.95 4.15 England East Midlands
17 Rushcliffe 2,643.27 4.42 England East Midlands
18 Teignbridge 2,643.12 5.18 England South West
19 North Devon 2,642.21 5.07 England South West
20 Pendle 2,640.18 4.14 England North West

Source: MHCLG, Scottish Government, Welsh Government / StatsWales annual Band D tables; rankings calculated by PlainCouncilTax.

Findings

Top entity in the ranking

The top-ranked record in this dataset is Dorset Council, with a value of 2,765.02 on the Band D 2026-27 (£) column. The full top-20 set is rendered in the table above. No number on this page is hardcoded, when MHCLG, Scottish Government, Welsh Government / StatsWales publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.

Distribution shape

The gap between the top-ranked record (2,765.02) and the 20th-ranked record (2,640.18) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-20 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.

Aggregate context

Across the full councils population, the aggregate query returns the following summary statistics. These anchors situate the top-20 ranking against the underlying population: how many records exist in total, what the sum of the ranking column is across all qualifying rows, and what the mean per-record value looks like. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied by the aggregate query (records with null or zero values on the ranking column are excluded). The aggregate row is computed by the same database engine that renders the ranking above, against the same snapshot.

Source provenance

The records in this ranking originate from the source agency, specifically the primary dataset. PlainCouncilTax ingests the source vintage published by the agency and serves it from its current dataset, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published source vintage propagates to this page automatically. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and how the figures are compiled.

Why this ranking matters

Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.

What this analysis cannot tell us

Band D is the council-set reference rate. Households in other bands pay a fixed proportion (Band A = 6/9 of Band D, Band B = 7/9, etc.). Headline Band D rankings do not reflect the actual band distribution within each council's housing stock; in areas with predominantly Band A-C housing the average household pays well below Band D. Furthermore, the Band D figure typically includes precepting-authority components (police, fire, adult social care) layered onto the council's own charge, so direct comparisons across councils require disaggregating the precepts. The dataset covers all 350 UK billing authorities (296 in England, 32 in Scotland, 22 in Wales) for 2026-27. Welsh councils use bands A-I (rather than A-H), which means Welsh Band D is not directly comparable to English/Scottish Band D in valuation terms. Scotland uses a separate Land and Buildings Transaction Tax system on transfers but Council Tax operates similarly.

Related data

    Sources