Council tax bands are public information. You can look up the band for any home in England or Wales — including every house on your street — for free, in seconds. The clever part isn't finding the bands; it's comparing them fairly so a lower neighbour actually strengthens your case.
No login, no fee. Bands are open to everyone; that's exactly why they work as evidence.
A neighbour in a lower band only helps you if they're a genuine match. Before you treat a home as a comparable, check two things:
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Type | Mid-terrace should be compared to mid-terrace, semi to semi, flat to flat. A detached house in a lower band proves nothing about your terrace. |
| Size | Floor area should be similar. A home much smaller than yours sitting lower is expected — it's not evidence you're over-banded. |
Floor areas aren't on the VOA site. The usual free source is the EPC register, where most homes have a recorded floor area from their energy certificate. Matching each neighbour's type and size to yours is what turns "they pay less" into "they're a like-for-like home in a lower band" — the difference between an opinion and evidence.
What you're looking for: several homes of your type, a similar size, near you, sitting one band below yours. Find a cluster of those and you have a real challenge.
Checking one address is easy. Checking a whole street — reading every band, then cross-referencing each home's type and floor area to keep only true like-for-like matches — is slow, fiddly work, and easy to get wrong. That's the job we automate.
Compare your whole street automatically →We read every band nearby, match type and floor area, and show which neighbours actually support a challenge — free to checkChallenge Your Band reads every band on your street from the official VOA list, pulls floor areas from the EPC register, and lays your neighbours out on a map colour-coded by like-for-like match — so you see at a glance whether the evidence is there, without checking addresses one by one.