What percentage of my bill goes to Essex?

In 2025-26, 83% of your total bill (£1,580.00 out of £1,893.55).

What does most of my money go towards?

Education takes the biggest share at 41% of the budget.

Is this council expensive compared to others?

In 2025-26, this council charges £148.20 less than the average county council.

How much has my bill gone up this year?

Your Band D bill went up by £57.00 (3.7%) from 2024-25 to 2025-26.

Transparency

Data provenance — Essex County Council

Every figure on the Essex County Council page links back to an official source. Here is the full manifest — what each data point is, where it comes from, and when it was last verified.

How we source Essex County Council data

The bar is: every number traceable to a .gov.uk URL.

Official UK government data only. No third-party aggregators. All figures come from GOV.UK bulk datasets (MHCLG Revenue Account, ONS, DEFRA, LGBCE) or from Essex County Council's own .gov.uk website.

Multi-source triangulation. Budget and population figures are cross-checked against at least two sources (e.g. council's own budget report vs. MHCLG RA return). If two sources disagree, we flag it in our internal validator and hold off publishing until we can verify the correct figure.

Dated and auditable. Every data point records the date it was verified. Spotted a discrepancy? Contact us and we'll investigate transparently — corrections are published on our change log.

Detailed data last verified: 2026-04-23

Dataset version: 49de0cd (2026-10-03) — every figure on this page comes from this exact dataset snapshot.

National sources (every council)

Bulk datasets used for every council on CivAccount. Council tax, service budgets, and population all come from these.

Council Tax 2025-26
GOV.UK (MHCLG)
Open source (opens in new tab)
- Band D council tax
- Precepts (parish, police, fire)
- Tax rise percentage vs prior year
Revenue Account (RA) 2025-26
GOV.UK (MHCLG)
Open source (opens in new tab)
- Net service budget (all 10 categories)
- Gross expenditure
- Total service budget
Revenue Outturn (RO) 2024-25
GOV.UK (MHCLG)
Open source (opens in new tab)
- Final out-turn spending
- Variance vs budget
ONS Mid-2024 Population Estimates
Office for National Statistics
Open source (opens in new tab)
- Population
- Per-capita calculations
Local Government Boundary Commission (LGBCE)
LGBCE
Open source (opens in new tab)
- Council type
- Ward structure
- Councillor numbers
DEFRA Local Authority Waste Statistics 2022-23
DEFRA
Open source (opens in new tab)
- Waste sent to recycling
- Waste sent to energy from waste
- Waste sent to landfill

Field-level sources (5)

Council-specific fields with a direct source URL. Each links to the exact .gov.uk document CivAccount pulled the data from.

Chief executive
Live page
Essex County Council — Code of governance (current CE)
Open source (opens in new tab)
Accessed 2026-04-23
Council leader
Live page
Essex County Council — Leader
Open source (opens in new tab)
Accessed 2026-04-23
Councillor basic allowance
2025-26
Essex County Council — Expenses and allowances
Open source (opens in new tab)
Accessed 2026-04-23
reserves
2024-25
Essex County Council Statement of Accounts 2024-25 — Balance Sheet (Total Reserves)
Page 28 — the source link opens at this page
“(2,736,568) Total Reserves (2,850,327)”
Open source (opens in new tab)
See the original page (screenshot) (opens in new tab)
Accessed 2026-04-23
sha256 8f5536b3fd1e…
total_councillors
Live page
Essex County Council — member index
Open source (opens in new tab)
Accessed 2026-04-23

Want the full methodology?

How we collect, validate, and present council data — plus our correction policy, open data licence, and update cadence.

Methodology →Change log →Press kit →Raw JSON →