How we work out the cost of living

Taken directly from MHCLG’s statistical release, Council Tax levels set by local authorities in England, published each March. Specifically Table 10, column 17: the average Band D council tax for the area of the billing authority including both local and major precepts.

That last part is the important bit, and it is where most comparisons go wrong. Your council tax bill is not just your council’s charge. It is your council’s charge plusa county precept, a police precept, a fire precept, and sometimes a combined-authority mayor. In Woking, the borough keeps £307 of a £2,598 bill and Surrey County Council takes £1,938. Quoting only the council’s own charge would understate the real bill by hundreds of pounds a year, so we quote the total, which is what actually arrives on the doormat.

We show Band D, which is the reference band every council publishes. The other seven bands are fixed fractions of it, set in law (Band A is two thirds of Band D, Band H is exactly double), so every band table on the site is derived from the published Band D rather than typed in. Bands themselves come from a valuation done in 1991, which is why two near-identical houses on one street can sit in different ones. Always check the band of the specific property.

Rates change on 1 April and cannot change on any other date, so the figures are current for the whole 2026/27 year. Last checked 14 July 2026.

From HM Land Registry’s UK House Price Index, the official measure. We use the average price paid by a first-time buyer in each council area, because that is the cohort these pages are for, and it is a real published series rather than something we have modelled.

We do not publish an “average 2-bed price”, which is the figure people usually ask for. UKHPI has no bedroom breakdown, and no free authoritative source does. Rather than invent one, we use a number that actually exists. The area pages also show what each type of home costs (detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat), which is more useful anyway.

UKHPI publishes monthly and runs about three months in arrears, so the price on each page is the most recent month Land Registry has released for that area, and the page says which month that is.

A standard repayment mortgage, calculated with the same function the app itself uses on a real property, so a landing page and the product can never quietly disagree.

• 10% deposit against the first-time-buyer average price.
• 4.5% interest, over 25 years, repayment rather than interest-only.

Rates move, and the one you are offered depends on your circumstances, your deposit and the lender. A 5% deposit halves what you need up front but raises both the monthly repayment and usually the rate. This is a budgeting estimate, not a mortgage offer, and not financial advice. For what you can actually borrow, speak to a whole-of-market broker.

These are the numbers we are least confident about, and we would rather say so than dress them up.

Energy, water and broadband: £230 a month. A national estimate. It does not vary by council area, because there is no reliable public source for household bills city by city. Inventing regional variation would be fabricating precision we do not have.

Everyday living costs: £265 a month for one adult. Groceries £200(the app’s own default), mobile £20, subscriptions £30, contents insurance £15. These are estimates, not sourced figures, and the area pages label them as such rather than letting them sit in the same column as a government statistic.

They are scoped to one adult. A second person does not double them, since a couple shares the broadband, the insurance and most of the food shop. Children, a car or a commute move them again. Treat the split as a starting shape rather than a budget: working out your number is what the app is for.

The totals exclude travel, and any service charge or ground rent. A leasehold flat can add a great deal on those last two.

Because we hold the published rate for 295 English billing authorities, each page can state a real position in a real league table rather than a vague impression.

One caveat we take seriously. When a page says a council charges more or less than the average English council (£2,411 across all 296), that is a mean across councils, computed from the 295 rates we hold. It is deliberately notdescribed as “the England average”, because MHCLG’s official England average is dwelling-weighted and comes out about £20 lower (currently £2,411 against the official figure). We cannot reproduce theirs without per-council dwelling counts, which nobody publishes for free, so we compute our own and call it what it is.

Council tax data from MHCLG. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. House price data © Crown copyright and database right, HM Land Registry.

The First Move is not an official government service. We are independent, and not connected to MHCLG, HM Land Registry, or any council. We do not create, estimate or model the council tax and house price figures: those are published data, reproduced as they are. The monthly costs are our own calculations from them, and the living costs are our own estimates. For official figures, go to the council directly.