How much is your council tax rising as government funding changes?

Some households in England are about to see exceptionally high council tax rises as the government reforms local authority funding.

As part of new finance arrangements - which come into effect in April - a handful of local authorities have been allowed to raise their council tax rates higher than the usual 5% maximum.

Using new data on council tax rates released today, the Sky News Data x Forensics team has analysed which areas will see the highest increases.

Enter your postcode or council name in our interactive tool below to see how much your council tax is set to rise:

Two councils in different parts of country show how the new finance settlement, which was finalised in February, will result in drastically different impacts depending on your area.

Richmond upon Thames in Greater London - home to Hampton Court Palace and Kew Gardens - is one of the least deprived local authorities in England.

Last year it received £48.1m in block funding from the government. By 2028/29, this is projected to fall to just £4.7m.

By then, the government's general grant funding is likely to make up just over 2% of the council's core spending money while council tax revenue will constitute 89%.

Meanwhile, Rotherham in South Yorkshire is among the bottom quarter of most-deprived lower-tier authorities. It is projected to see its main government funding rise from the current £177m to £205m by 2028/29 - a 16% increase. By then, less than half of the authorities core funds are likely to come from council tax.

While Rotherham will be raising its council tax by 3.95% this year, Richmond upon Thames has set an increase of 4.99%.

"Our changes are the most significant step yet to make English local government more sustainable," a government spokesperson said in a statement to Sky News. "We have introduced the first multi-year funding settlement in over a decade to give councils the certainty they've asked us for, and we are investing more money into the most deprived communities."

"Because of our reforms, by the end of the decade the top 10% most deprived areas will have 45% more spending power than the least deprived."

How is funding for local councils changing?

Why would these areas see such contrasting impacts of the new settlement? Key to the new finance arrangements is an updated formula calculating how much money the government annually grants to each council.

The old formula had not been changed since 2013. The new one will incorporate population projections, assessments of relative needs and more recent data on deprivation, an area's remoteness, and the amount in council tax revenue each authority can realistically raise from their residents.

Kate Ogden, an analyst with the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said, "We really got to a point where the funding that different areas received didn't bear much relation to the amount of funding that they might have needed to spend on services.

"The system we had got to was quite arbitrary. It was considered unfair by lots of people."

In 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government cut local government funding in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Over the next decade, councils' core funding per resident fell by about 30%.

Although grants increased slightly in the early 2020s, core funding per person, after adjusting for inflation, remains below 2010/11 levels.

Councils serving the most deprived areas had been hardest hit by the cuts over the past decade, according to IFS research. These councils were more reliant on grants, and were less able to make up the shortfall by raising council tax compared to their wealthier counterparts.

The government says the new settlement aims to tackle these issues.

"By directing more funding to where it is needed most, the government is addressing long-standing imbalances that saw some of the country's most deprived communities receive less support than better-off areas," read the government's statement accompanying the finalised settlement.

Will your council get more government funding?

The updated formula will effectively create "winners" and "losers" over the next three years, experts told Sky News.

As with the cases of Richmond upon Thames and Rotherham, some councils will receive significantly more money per head, while others will see their grants from the government drop dramatically.

"Generally, this reform distributes money towards areas that are more urban and more deprived," said the IFS' Ms Ogden.

For instance, outer London boroughs, which score higher for relative deprivation, will see their general grant funding increase in cash terms by 27% over the next three years.

In contrast, inner London boroughs - which tend to be wealthier - will as a whole see their block funding fall in cash-terms by 54%.

Nonetheless, the formula looks at deprivation on average across each local area - which can miss pockets of poverty. For instance, while inner London boroughs on average tend to be wealthier, several neighbourhoods within these councils rank among the poorest in England.

Why are some areas raising council tax more than 5%?

Unless a referendum is held, upper and single-tier authorities are generally not allowed to raise their council tax above 5% while lower-tier authorities cannot raise it above 3%.

However, the government has this year granted permission to seven councils to raise their tax rates above the usual thresholds.

North Somerset, Shropshire, and Worcestershire have been permitted to raise their council tax by nearly 9%.

In Windsor & Maidenhead, Trafford and Warrington, residents will see their council tax rise by nearly 7.5% while, in Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole, council tax is increasing by more than 6.7%.

"The local authority will apply to the department, to MHCLG [Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government], for the permission to do so," explained Stuart Hoddinott, associate director at the Institute for Government (IFG).

"The fundamental reason that they want to do it is because they have a budget gap in that year that they cannot meet, and so they have to find a way to fill it."

In addition, six of the councils most negatively impacted by the new funding formula will be allowed to raise their council tax an unlimited amount without holding referendums in 2027/28 and 2028/29.

These councils are Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, the City of London, Windsor & Maidenhead, Westminster, and Wandsworth.

These six, along with Tower Hamlets, had the lowest council tax rates in England last year.

With permission not granted until next year, despite their funding beginning to fall this year, residents in those areas could see service cuts over the next few months.

"The government's so-called Fair Funding Review is anything but fair, and expects councils like ours to do more with less money as we face £10m cuts in funding over four years," Cllr Elizabeth Campbell, leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, wrote in a recent statement.

To generate savings, the council is reducing the council tax discount offered to the most financially vulnerable residents, from 100% to 90%, as well as adding a 100% council tax premium on second homes in the borough.

Will the new funding arrangements 'fix' council budgets?

Although experts say the new arrangements are a welcome announcement for the most deprived areas of England, they warn much is still needed to ensure all councils can operate sustainably in the long-term.

The settlement introduced measures helping with debt accrued from spending on special educational needs support. However, the cost of social care remains the biggest pressure on local authorities.

After adjusting for inflation, spending on social care per head by English councils has increased by 27% over the past 10 years.

Meanwhile, per capita spending on all other local services in real terms, such as bin collections and road maintenance, is down 3% since 2016.

Until the root causes of stress on the social care system are addressed, councils will continue to feel the squeeze.

"There are massive pressures in adult social care caused by all kinds of things: rising costs, ageing population, greater rates of disability among working age adults," said Amber Dellar, a public services researcher at the IFG.

Ms Dellar also pointed to children's social care and rising levels of homelessness as increasingly costly for councils.

And with elections across 136 local authorities set for May, many councillors will soon find out whether residents approve or disprove of their handling of council budgets.

Web development by Giacomo Boscaini-Gilroy, additional reporting by Tom Cheshire, and additional production by Maz Poynter & Meg Matthews.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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