Council datasets
Everything we hold, in one place — what's live, what's collecting, and what lands next. Every dataset follows the same rules: source on every record, verification or ingestion date, and flagged-never-guessed gaps. Reuse is free with attribution — licensing and fair usage cover the detail; the methodology explains the verification.
Council tax bands & charges 2026/27
Full band tables (A–H, A–I Wales), Band D headlines, year-on-year changes and area notes — every figure read from the council's own page.
Coverage: England 296 · Scotland 32 (council tax element only) · Wales 22
Source: Council-published pages, two-pass verified
Empty homes & second homes
Long-term empty dwellings, second homes and all-vacant counts per council — official statistics joined with what each council actually charges.
Coverage: England (MHCLG T615 + CTB 2025) · Scotland (Sep 2025) · Wales (CT1 2026-27)
Source: Official OGL statistical releases
Department contacts directory
Verified phones and emails for 12 departments per council — planning first — plus switchboards. 'No public line' recorded as data.
Coverage: All 350 councils on completion; council pages update as records land
Source: Council-published pages only, format-validated, two-pass
Second home & empty homes premium policies
What each council charges: second home premium % with effective date, empty homes premium tiers by years vacant, and exceptions — verbatim-sourced.
Coverage: All 350 councils on completion; cross-checked against official uptake statistics
Source: Council-published pages, two-pass verified
Late-night premises licences
Every premises licence and its latest permitted closing hour, from each council's public register — the comparable-hours evidence licence applications turn on, made searchable instead of buried in a PDF.
Coverage: Building toward every UK licensing authority; open-data registers first
Source: Council public premises registers (Licensing Act 2003)
Licensing registers (taxi, pavement, HMO & more)
Council licensing registers made searchable: taxi & private hire, pavement, street trading, HMOs and scrap metal dealers — each public by law, aggregated per council with application support attached.
Coverage: Building toward every UK licensing authority, register by register
Source: Council public licensing registers
Data confidence index
A reproducible 0–100 score for how verifiable each council's published data is: verification, completeness, freshness, clean reads.
Coverage: All 350 councils, rescored on every dataset refresh
Source: Derived from the verified datasets, method published
Corrections log
Every wrong figure found — on aggregators, in viral claims, on councils' own pages — with the wrong value, verified value, and how it was confirmed.
Coverage: UK-wide, appended as errors are found
Source: First-party verification findings (ClaimReview markup)
Council tax support schemes
Each council's local reduction scheme: income bands, minimum payments, maximum support — no central source exists anywhere.
Coverage: All 350 councils
Source: Council scheme documents
Garden & bulky waste fees
Subscription prices and bulky-waste charges per council — the start of the fees & charges dataset, refreshed each April price cycle.
Coverage: All 350 councils
Source: Council fee schedules
Parking: CPZ & permit prices
Controlled parking zone presence and resident permit price ranges (with pricing basis) per council.
Coverage: All 350 councils
Source: Council parking pages and schedules
Budgets, gaps & service changes
Per-council revenue budgets by service, financial distress markers (exceptional support, s114, stated gaps) and significant service changes from each council's own budget papers.
Coverage: England first (MHCLG RA returns + council papers); Wales/Scotland equivalents follow
Source: MHCLG returns (OGL) + council budget papers, two-pass verified
Council tax collection rates
Collection rates, arrears and uncollected amounts per council from MHCLG returns — packaged nowhere else.
Coverage: England per-authority; Scotland/Wales equivalents assessed
Source: Official OGL statistical releases
Frequently asked
What council datasets does CouncilData publish?+
Live today: verified council tax bands and charges for all 350 UK councils, empty homes and second homes counts joined with premium policies, the data confidence index and the public corrections log. Collecting daily: a 12-department contact directory and premium policies per council. Landing roughly monthly: council tax support schemes, waste fees, parking, and collection rates.
Is the council data free to use?+
Yes — current-period data is free under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to CouncilData, on the website and as CSV downloads. Commercial licensing (bulk data, multi-year history and alerts) is in development.
How is each dataset verified?+
Council-published figures are read from the council's own page and independently re-read (two-pass), with arithmetic checks against statutory ratios; official statistics are ingested from OGL releases and reconciled against their published national totals. Every record carries a source URL and a verification or ingestion date.