I have added council tax to the property search pages. This is a useful and relevant piece of information missing until now.  I have been hesitant until now about adding it, simply because the licensing issues related to getting the precise data required are challenging.  I have a sensible way to achieve it.  The downside is that it's an estimate, often spot on; other times it uses estimates where the band can't be 100% ascertained.

The Council Tax estimate uses the property’s recorded Land Registry sale price and adjusts it back to the relevant valuation date of 1991 in England or 2003 in Wales.  It's using official house-price indices. This produces a likely Council Tax band, which is then combined with the property’s local authority rate to estimate the standard annual charge for a two-adult household.

Category A sales are preferred, with Category B sales used when necessary. Providing the exact official band for every individual property is more difficult because the underlying property-level Council Tax datasets are subject to access, reuse and licensing restrictions, particularly for automated use on a commercial property website.

I therefore calculate an independent estimate from openly available data rather than republishing restricted valuation records. The result is a useful guide, but the actual band and bill may differ because of valuation decisions, local levies, discounts, premiums or exemptions.

I would rather stay on the right side of licensing and give you a good, supportable figure than ignore licensing, or worse, have to use a commercial service which introduces costs that mean it's not going to be free, and I want everything on this site to be free, no paywalls!