548 Households to Pay One Boss

1. What Does It Cost to Run Your Council?

The average council chief executive in England earns £194,230 in total remuneration — salary, pension, benefits. That figure comes from the TaxPayers’ Alliance Town Hall Rich List 2025, which found a record 3,906 council officials were paid over £100,000 in 2023-24.

The average Band D council tax bill for 2026-27 is £2,392, according to MHCLG — an increase of £111, or 4.9%, on last year. The total council tax requirement across England is £46.8 billion.

Put those numbers together. On average, it takes 114 households paying their full annual Band D council tax to cover one chief executive’s pay. In Wandsworth — where the Band D bill is £1,028, the lowest in England — it takes 548.

2. The 1991 Problem

Council tax bands in England are based on what your property was worth on 1 April 1991. Not an estimate of current value. Not an index-linked figure. A snapshot from 35 years ago, set by estate agents who drove past in second gear, doing four hundred homes a day without leaving the car.

This creates a system where the effective tax rate varies wildly. In Hartlepool, it is 1.61%. In Westminster, 0.06%. That is a twenty-seven-fold gap. Not because Hartlepool chose a higher rate. Because the banding system has not been updated in 35 years, and property values in Westminster have risen by multiples that the 1991 bands never anticipated.

A Band D property in 1991 was worth between £68,001 and £88,000. The average house price in Westminster today is over £1 million. The band has not moved. The tax has not changed. The gap between what wealthy areas pay and what the rest of the country pays has compounded for three and a half decades.

3. Who Actually Pays?

Nearly half of all dwellings in England receive some form of council tax exemption or discount. The fewer households that pay the full rate, the heavier the load on those who do.

At the National Living Wage of £12.71 per hour, the average Band D bill of £2,392 costs 157 hours of work — that is 4.2 working weeks. Just council tax. Before rent. Before food. Before energy. Before the fiscal drag on your income tax that we documented in our previous article.

For a household in Dorset — where the Band D bill is £2,765, the highest in England — it is 218 hours. Nearly five and a half working weeks to pay for council services alone.

4. The Whitehall Squeeze

Before you blame the council, look at what Whitehall forces them to spend.

Councils do not choose their biggest costs. Adult social care is a statutory obligation — councils must provide it, and it now consumes the largest single share of council budgets. The costs have been rising faster than the funding to cover them for over a decade.

Temporary accommodation for homeless households is another statutory duty. Councils across England are now spending approximately £2.8 billion a year on emergency housing — more than double the figure from 2016. The LGA projects this will reach almost £4 billion by 2029-30.

SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) is the obligation that is currently breaking councils. Thirty-seven councils are on emergency financial support — for the ninth consecutive year.

The pattern is the same everywhere. Westminster sets the obligation. Westminster does not fully fund it. The council raises council tax to cover the gap. You pay. The CEO’s salary is visible. The unfunded mandate behind it is not.

5. Roads Get Worse, Pay Goes Up

The data shows an uncomfortable pattern. Councils with the worst road condition ratings pay their top officials more, not less. Red-rated councils — those with the poorest road surfaces — pay an average of £232,569 in CEO remuneration. Green-rated councils average £213,400.

6. Empty Homes, Full Waiting Lists

Liverpool has over 10,000 empty homes. It has over 12,000 families on the housing waiting list. Across England, there are 272,257 long-term empty homes as of 2024. Councils have the power to levy premium council tax on properties empty for more than two years — up to 300% — but application is inconsistent.