Local area data: your questions answered
Find official figures for your area: deprivation ranks, house prices, pay, unemployment, population, health, census maps, your council and councillors.
How do I check my council tax band?
For a home in England or Wales, search by address or postcode on GOV.UK's check your council tax band service, which uses the Valuation Office Agency's list. In Scotland, bands are on the Scottish Assessors website. Northern Ireland has domestic rates based on capital value instead, run by Land and Property Services.
You can challenge your band as of right if you have been paying council tax on the home for less than six months, or if the Valuation Office changed the band in the last six months. Otherwise you can ask for a band review with evidence, such as up to five similar homes in a lower band. You must keep paying while a challenge is considered.
Bands reflect estimated values in 1991 in England and 2003 in Wales, not today's prices. See what bands are based on.
Related: What are the council tax bands based on? · How much has council tax gone up this year? · How are domestic rates calculated in Northern Ireland? · How much is council tax in Scotland?
How deprived is my area?
In England, enter your postcode in the government's Local Deprivation Explorer to see where your neighbourhood ranks in the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, published by MHCLG on 30 October 2025. It ranks all 33,755 small areas, each with about 1,500 residents, from 1 (most deprived) to 33,755 (least deprived), and gives the decile.
Related: What is the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)? · How is deprivation measured in Wales and Northern Ireland? · How many people are in poverty in the UK? · How do I find life expectancy in my area?
Who are my local councillors?
Find your council with GOV.UK's Find your local council service, then look for its list of councillors, which every council publishes. Councillors are elected for a ward or division, and the council's site normally lets you search by postcode or ward to see who represents you and how to contact them.
Council websites also publish each councillor's register of interests and allowances, along with committee papers and meeting minutes. Councils also publish local election results and notices of upcoming elections. In England, ward boundaries and the number of councillors per ward are set by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England.
A ward may have one councillor or several, and in two-tier areas you are represented on both the county and district council. For your MP, see who is my MP.
Related: How much are councillors paid? · Who is my MP? · Which council am I in? · Where can I find official UK election results?
What is the average house price in my area?
The UK House Price Index gives the average price and annual change for every local authority in the UK. It is produced by HM Land Registry with the ONS, Registers of Scotland and Land and Property Services in Northern Ireland, and you can search it by area and chart prices over time.
New figures come out monthly; the UK HPI reports page says August 2026 data will be published on 21 October 2026. The ONS private rent and house prices bulletin summarises the same data for regions and nations. To see what individual homes on a street sold for, use sold house prices.
Local averages rest on fewer sales than national ones, so they move around more from month to month. Recent months are revised as more sales are registered, and Northern Ireland figures are quarterly.
Related: How do I find sold house prices? · What is the average house price in the UK? · What is the house price to earnings ratio in England and Wales? · How much are rents rising in the UK?
Which council am I in?
Enter your postcode in GOV.UK's Find your local council service, which links to your council's website. In many parts of England you will have two: a county council and a district, borough or city council.
GOV.UK's guide to how councils work explains the split. County councils run services such as education, transport, social care, libraries and waste management. District councils handle bin collections, recycling, council tax collection, housing and planning applications. Unitary authorities, London boroughs and metropolitan boroughs provide all of these, and parish or town councils may sit below them. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have single-tier councils.
Your council tax bill can include charges set by other bodies, such as police, fire and parish councils, so check which body sets each part. See how councils are funded.
Related: Who are my local councillors? · How are councils funded? · What do councils spend their money on? · How much has council tax gone up this year?
What is the population of my area?
Each statistics office publishes yearly population estimates for every council area. The ONS estimates for England and Wales, for mid-2025, were published on 29 July 2026. Scotland's are from National Records of Scotland, and NISRA published mid-2025 estimates for Northern Ireland's 11 council districts on 24 September 2026.
Estimates for smaller areas, such as wards and neighbourhoods, are available from the ONS and through Nomis, and ONS's Explore local statistics service lets you look up and compare areas by postcode. For the age, ethnicity or housing of an area, census results give much more detail; see census data for your area.
Estimates are rolled forward from the last census, so uncertainty grows each year, especially for small areas, and figures are revised. Compare areas using the same release.
Related: How do I see census data for my area on a map? · What is the population of the UK? · What are the UK population projections? · Where can I find UK census data?
How is deprivation measured in Wales and Northern Ireland?
Wales uses the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2025, published by the Welsh Government on 27 November 2025. It ranks the small areas of Wales from most to least deprived. The release page has a postcode-to-rank lookup file, and ranks are mapped on DataMapWales. Further analysis, including deprivation relating to children, has followed.
Northern Ireland's official measure is still the Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure 2017, released by NISRA on 23 November 2017. It ranks 890 Super Output Areas from 1 (most deprived) to 890 across seven domains, with an online analysis package and maps.
Each nation's index uses its own indicators, areas and dates, so ranks cannot be combined or compared directly across the UK. Northern Ireland's measure is based on older data than the others. For England, see how deprived your area is.
Related: How deprived is my area? · What is the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)? · What is the population of Wales?
What is the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)?
The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation is the Scottish Government's official measure of area deprivation. It ranks Scotland's 6,976 small areas, called data zones, from 1 (most deprived) to 6,976 (least deprived), across seven domains: income, employment, education, health, access to services, crime and housing.
The current version is SIMD 2020, revised as SIMD 2020v2 after a problem was found in the income domain ranks supplied by DWP; the government says the 2020v2 ranks should be used. You can find a data zone's rank with the postcode look-up file or on the SIMD interactive map. Users often group areas into fifths or tenths, such as the 20% most deprived.
The Scottish Government notes that rural data zones cover large areas, so SIMD is less good at finding small pockets of rural deprivation, and that not everyone in a deprived area is deprived.
Related: How deprived is my area? · How is deprivation measured in Wales and Northern Ireland? · How many people are in poverty in Scotland?
How do I see census data for my area on a map?
For England and Wales, the ONS Census maps tool shows Census 2021 results on an interactive map: pick a topic, such as ethnic group, housing tenure or health, then search a postcode to zoom in to your neighbourhood and compare it with wider areas. ONS's custom area profile tool builds a profile for the areas you choose.
Scotland's Census 2022 results have their own census maps from National Records of Scotland. For Northern Ireland, NISRA's Flexible Table Builder lets you make Census 2021 tables for local areas.
A census is a snapshot of one day: 21 March 2021 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and 20 March 2022 in Scotland, so results are not directly comparable across all four nations. For current population counts, use mid-year estimates. For downloads, see UK census data.
Related: Where can I find UK census data? · What is the population of my area? · What is the UK population by ethnicity? · What is the UK population by religion?
What is the average salary in my area?
The ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings publishes median pay for every local authority in two ways: by where people live, in table 8, and by where they work, in table 7. The two can differ a lot in commuter areas. The latest survey results, for April 2025, were published on 23 October 2025 and put UK median weekly pay for full-time employees at £766.60.
The same figures appear in each council's Nomis labour market profile, which you can find by postcode. ONS's Explore local statistics service adds measures such as household income per head.
The survey samples employee jobs from HMRC payroll records, so it excludes the self-employed, and figures for small areas have wide margins of error. The median is usually lower than the mean.
Related: What is the average salary in the UK? · What is the unemployment rate in my area? · What is the median household income in the UK?
How healthy is my area?
For England, the Department of Health and Social Care's Fingertips service publishes public health profiles that compare each council area with its region and England on measures such as life expectancy, smoking, obesity and causes of death. Its Local Health profile goes down to small areas, and in September 2026 added healthy life expectancy for middle-layer super output areas, the ONS neighbourhood geography.
Fingertips is being replaced by a new GOV.UK service called Find public health data, now in development. Scotland has the ScotPHO online profiles and Wales the Public Health Wales Observatory.
Small areas have wide margins of error, and Fingertips colours show whether an area differs significantly from the comparator, not by how much. For life expectancy, see life expectancy in your area.
Related: How do I find life expectancy in my area? · What is the obesity rate in the UK? · What are vaccination rates in the UK? · How deprived is my area?
What is the unemployment rate in my area?
Search by postcode for your council's Nomis labour market profile. It brings together employment, unemployment and inactivity rates from the Annual Population Survey with the monthly claimant count, earnings and jobs figures, alongside regional and national comparisons. ONS's Explore local statistics service compares areas on similar measures.
The claimant count, which counts people claiming unemployment-related benefits, is published monthly down to ward level. It differs from the ILO unemployment rate, which comes from a survey and counts people looking for work whether or not they claim benefits.
Survey-based rates for a single council cover a 12-month period and have wide margins of error, so a change of a point or two may not be meaningful. See how unemployment is calculated.
Related: How is UK unemployment calculated? · What is the UK unemployment rate? · What is the average salary in my area? · How many people claim Universal Credit?
These answers say where official figures are published and how they are defined. They give no verdict on any claim. To report an error, send a correction request.