Key takeaways
- A 100% second home council tax premium doubles the bill. On England's 2026-27 average Band D of £2,391.52, that means £4,783.04 instead of £2,391.52.
- 211 of England's 296 billing authorities charged the premium in 2025, and every one of the 211 set it at the full 100% rather than lower.
- The same 100% adds £1,594.35 in Band A and £4,783.04 in Band H at the England average, because the statutory band ratios run from 6 to 18.
- 37.3% of the 170,000 dwellings charged the premium sit in Bands A and B, so most of the money comes from cheap property, not grand property.
- Wales has allowed up to 300% since 1 April 2023. Scotland's ceiling is double, and 29 of its 32 councils took it up from 1 April 2024.
What the second home council tax premium costs by band
You own a furnished property that nobody lives in as a main home, and you want the number on the bill. In England it's either the ordinary council tax for the band or exactly twice it. There isn't much of a middle setting in practice, and which one you get is decided by the council, not by you.
The power sits in section 11C of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, inserted on 26 October 2023 by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. It lets a billing authority in England raise the tax on a dwelling where "there is no resident" and "the dwelling is substantially furnished" by "such percentage of not more than 100 as it may specify in the determination". The same determination disapplies the no-resident discount under section 11(2)(a), so the baseline is the full band charge before anything is added.
MHCLG put England's average Band D for 2026-27 at £2,391.52 including the adult social care and parish precepts, published on 25 March 2026. That's 4.9% up on the £2,280.21 average for 2025-26. Here is what a 100% premium does to that average across all eight bands. The statutory proportions in section 5(1) of the 1992 Act are "6: 7: 8: 9: 11: 13: 15: 18", where 6 is Band A and 18 is Band H.
| Band | Ratio to D | No premium | With a 100% premium | Extra a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 6/9 | £1,594.35 | £3,188.69 | £1,594.35 |
| B | 7/9 | £1,860.07 | £3,720.14 | £1,860.07 |
| C | 8/9 | £2,125.80 | £4,251.59 | £2,125.80 |
| D | 9/9 | £2,391.52 | £4,783.04 | £2,391.52 |
| E | 11/9 | £2,922.97 | £5,845.94 | £2,922.97 |
| F | 13/9 | £3,454.42 | £6,908.84 | £3,454.42 |
| G | 15/9 | £3,985.87 | £7,971.73 | £3,985.87 |
| H | 18/9 | £4,783.04 | £9,566.08 | £4,783.04 |
These are England-average figures, not your bill. The average is an average of 296 billing authorities whose actual Band D charges for 2026-27 run from £1,028.21 in Wandsworth to £2,765.02 in Dorset. On the Dorset figure a 100% premium is £5,530.04 for a Band D second home. On the Wandsworth figure it's £2,056.42. Same percentage, £3,473.62 a year apart.
211 of 296 English councils charge it, and all of them picked 100%
The premium is discretionary. Nothing obliges a council to charge it, and the government's own implementation guidance says the power "is discretionary". So the first question isn't how much, it's whether.
MHCLG's council taxbase release for 2025, published 21 January 2026 from a snapshot taken in October 2025, answers it: "211 out of 296 authorities (71%) reported charging the premium in 2025". And then the line that removes the ambiguity: "All of these authorities charged a 100% premium only." The law permits any figure up to 100, and every council that used the power went to the ceiling rather than picking something lower.
That leaves 85 authorities charging nothing extra. There's a timing reason some of them aren't on the list yet rather than a policy one. Section 11C(3) says a first determination "must be made at least one year before the beginning of the financial year to which it relates", so a council that decided late in 2024 couldn't bill until April 2026 at the earliest. And section 11C(6) lets an authority vary or revoke a determination before the year begins, so 211 isn't a one-way count either.
The dwellings side moved too. There were 268,000 second homes on the council tax list in October 2025, "a decrease of 12,000 (or 4.3%) compared with 2024". MHCLG's explanation is blunt: some authorities said the fall was "due to reviews undertaken and second homes becoming occupied or unfurnished due to the introduction of the Second Homes Premium". Of the 268,000, 170,000 were charged the premium and 91,000 were charged neither a premium nor a discount.
The same percentage costs three times as much in Band H as in Band A
A percentage premium inherits whatever distribution the band system already has. Section 5(1) fixes Band A at 6 ninths of Band D and Band H at 18 ninths, so the cash a 100% premium adds is three times larger at the top of the table than at the bottom. The chart below plots that extra charge band by band at the England 2026-27 average, and the gap between the first bar and the last is £3,188.69 a year.
Which would matter less if second homes were concentrated at the top. They aren't. MHCLG reports that "37.3% being charged the second homes premium are in Bands A and B". For comparison, 43.2% of all English dwellings are in Bands A and B, so premium-charged second homes are only slightly better banded than housing generally. The picture of this as a tax on large coastal villas doesn't survive the band distribution. A Band A second home is charged £1,594.35 extra at the England average, not the £4,783.04 that Band H carries.
Empty homes skew lower still. 56.7% of dwellings charged the empty homes premium are in Bands A and B.
A Cornish Band H second home is charged £10,363.72
Cornwall Council agreed "to charge an additional 100% Council Tax premium on second homes from 1 April 2025". Its 2026-27 area charges for a dwelling occupied by two adults are £1,727.29 in Band A, £2,590.93 in Band D and £5,181.86 in Band H. Double those and a Cornish second home faces £3,454.58, £5,181.86 and £10,363.72.
The Band H number is the one worth sitting with. £10,363.72 of council tax on one property in one year, on a charge that didn't exist before April 2025, from a council whose Band D is 8.3% above the England average. That isn't a national figure and it isn't the typical case. It's the top of one high-charging authority, and it's the kind of number that shows up on the bill without any change in the property's value or use. On the question of whether a second home is a good investment, the uncollected rent and the standing charges move the answer further than the purchase price does, and the premium is one of those standing charges.
Nine mandatory exceptions, and three cover second homes only
Council tax information letter 5/2024, published 1 November 2024, sets out the mandatory exceptions in the Council Tax (Prescribed Classes of Dwellings and Consequential Amendments) (England) Regulations 2024. They took effect from 1 April 2025, alongside the premium itself. Nine classes, lettered E to M:
- Class E, both premiums, no time limit: a dwelling which "is or would be someone's sole or main residence if they were not residing in job-related armed forces accommodation".
- Class F, both premiums, no time limit: "Annexes forming part of, or being treated as part of, the main dwelling".
- Class G, both premiums, 12 months: "Dwellings being actively marketed for sale".
- Class H, both premiums, 12 months: "Dwellings being actively marketed for let".
- Class I, both premiums, 12 months from the grant: unoccupied dwellings "where probate has recently been granted".
- Class J, second homes only, no time limit: "Job-related dwellings".
- Class K, second homes only, no time limit: "Occupied caravan pitches and boat moorings".
- Class L, second homes only, no time limit: "Seasonal homes where year-round, permanent occupation is prohibited, specified for use as holiday accommodation or planning condition preventing occupancy for more than 28 days continuously".
- Class M, long-term empty only, 12 months: "Empty properties requiring or undergoing major repairs or structural alterations".
Class L is the broadest of the three that apply to second homes alone. A property whose year-round occupation is prohibited, or which is specified for use as holiday accommodation, or which carries a planning condition against occupancy for more than 28 days continuously, sits outside the premium with no time limit at all. Class G and Class H are the ones people misread: marketing a property for sale buys 12 months of exception, not an indefinite one, and the clock doesn't restart because the asking price changed.
These are floors, not the whole picture. The letter adds that "councils have the power to set their own exceptions to premiums as part of their determinations" and keeps the separate section 13A power to reduce liability. Two identical cottages in neighbouring authorities can be treated differently on facts that are the same.
The empty-home ladder runs to 300%, and it's already fully used
The second homes premium is the newer power. The older one, section 11B, is harsher. For financial years from 1 April 2021 the maximum is "100" where a dwelling has been empty for less than 5 years, "200" at 5 years but less than 10, and "300" at 10 years or more. A dwelling becomes long-term empty after a continuous period of at least 1 year unoccupied and substantially unfurnished.
On the England 2026-27 average Band D, that ladder is £2,391.52 with no premium, £4,783.04 at 100%, £7,174.56 at 200% and £9,566.08 at 300%. The top rung isn't theoretical. Of 8,445 dwellings recorded as empty for over 10 years and charged a premium in 2025, 7,622 were at the 300% rate. Of 17,179 empty for 5 to 10 years, 16,485 were at 200%. 291 of 296 authorities charged an empty homes premium, on 153,000 dwellings, "up by 33,000 or 27.9% compared to 2024".
Which is the background to the 100% cap on second homes. Councils were already running a four-times-the-bill charge on long-term empties before they got any power over furnished second homes at all. The direction of the band table is also why the separate high value council tax surcharge from April 2028 works differently: it attaches to value above a threshold rather than multiplying a band charge.
Second home council tax in Wales reaches 300%, and Scotland stops at double
England and Scotland both stop at a doubled bill. Wales allows three times as much again. Welsh Government guidance states that "from 1 April 2023, the maximum level at which local authorities can set council tax premiums will increase to 300%". It adds that authorities "can set the premium at any level up to the maximum", with different rates allowed for second homes and for long-term empties. Wales also runs a ninth band, I, with a ratio of 21, under section 5(1A), which has applied to financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2005.
Scotland took a different route. The Scottish Government announced on 31 March 2024 that "new powers enabling councils to charge up to double the full rate of council tax on second homes come into force this week". Twenty-nine of Scotland's 32 local authorities confirmed they would use them. Falkirk, Glasgow City and North Ayrshire chose not to. A Scottish second home is defined as one "occupied for at least 25 days in a year" that isn't someone's primary residence, and before April 2024 second homes there carried a default 50% discount.
So the second home council tax rules differ by nation, and the figures in this piece are England figures computed on England's bands. Comparing a Welsh 300% to an English 100% without comparing the underlying band charges tells you nothing useful, which is why the arithmetic here stays inside one nation.
What's confirmed before the 28 October Budget, and what isn't
Confirmed, with dates: the England premium cap of 100% from 1 April 2025, the nine exception classes from the same date, the 211 adopting authorities as at October 2025, and England's £2,391.52 average Band D for 2026-27. Each of those is in a government publication and each has a publication date attached.
Not confirmed is anything about holiday lets. Saffery's pre-Budget note of 28 September 2026, written by Sean McGinness, records that "there has also been speculation suggesting that Healey is considering treating holiday lets as second homes for council tax purposes, instead of businesses". That is reported speculation in an accountancy firm's note, dated a month before the Budget. It isn't a measure, it isn't costed, and it is not the basis of a single number above. The same note observes that the Chancellor's first Budget is on 28 October.
What makes the speculation interesting rather than idle is Class L. Saffery's wording is that holiday lets are currently treated as businesses for council tax purposes rather than as second homes. But a seasonal home specified for use as holiday accommodation is already outside the premium under Class L, with no time limit. Any reclassification would have to deal with that exception. What it would do to a given bill depends on drafting nobody has seen.
Who pays this, and what the figures cannot tell you
The strongest case for the premium is in the dwellings count. 268,000 second homes fell by 12,000 in a year, and councils themselves attribute part of that to properties "becoming occupied or unfurnished" because of the premium. If the aim was to move furnished empty property back into use, something moved. The 170,000 still being charged are also a revenue line that didn't exist before April 2025.
The strongest case against is in the band distribution. A charge where 37.3% of liable dwellings are in Bands A and B is not falling on discretionary wealth in any reliable way, and the 12,000 decline is a net figure that hides reclassification. A property re-declared as unfurnished, or let out, or sold, all show up the same way in the statistics.
Three limitations sit on everything above, and the first is the biggest. The taxbase release counts dwellings charged a premium, not the owners' circumstances, so it cannot tell you whether a given dwelling is an inherited cottage past its 12-month probate exception or a deliberate investment. The October 2025 snapshot is a single-year sample that caught the premium in its first six months, so avoidance behaviour had barely had time to develop. And Table 9's band charges are area figures for a two-adult dwelling, which is the right comparator for a second home only because a premium determination disapplies the no-resident discount. In an authority charging no premium and still offering a discount, the base bill is lower than the table shows. The council tax increase 2027 figures then move that same bill again from the following April, premium and all.
What would change these numbers
The shape of the table is the most stable thing in it, but not fixed. Section 5(4) lets the Secretary of State, by order, "substitute another proportion for that which is for the time being effective", and subsection (4A) extends that to a different number of bands entirely. No such order has been made for England. Three nearer things could move sooner.
The adopting-authority count is the first. 85 English authorities weren't charging the premium in October 2025, and the one-year notice rule in section 11C(3) means any of them could appear in the next release with a 100% premium already live. The next council taxbase statistics are due in November 2026, and that's the file that shows whether 211 has moved.
The second is the average itself. £2,391.52 rose 4.9% in a year and 5% the year before, and a premium doubles whatever the band charge happens to be. A second home in a council charging the premium sees twice the cash effect of each annual increase at exactly the same percentage, which is the part a headline rate hides.
The third is the holiday let boundary, and it resolves on 28 October 2026 or it doesn't. If the classification of holiday lets changes, Class L is where the effect lands, and neither the taxbase release nor the council tax levels tables publish how many properties rely on that exception. Until something is actually drafted, the only honest figures for a second home council tax premium are the ones above: the band charge, doubled, in an authority that has chosen to charge it.