£100 for bands A to D: why nearly half of Uttlesford's homes might miss out

Today’s Autumn Budget had the headline announcement of a £100 Household Energy Payment to help with energy bills this winter. Households in England whose homes are in council tax bands A to D will receive it from January 2027, paid by the local council.

For us, that’s Uttlesford District Council (UDC). The scheme is, of course, welcome, but it’s of less use to us in Uttlesford than anywhere in the county, and almost anywhere in the country.

Of the 40,790 homes on the Valuation Office Agency’s list for Uttlesford, 22,460 (55%) are in bands A to D. Across England it’s 81%.¹ Of the twelve districts that Essex County Council (ECC) covers, Uttlesford has the lowest share. In Harlow it’s 88%. So about 18,300 homes here, 45%, won’t get the £100, whatever the income of the people living in them.

What a band says, and what it doesn’t

A council tax band is set by what a home was worth on 1 April 1991, or would have been worth for one built since. Band D covered homes worth £68,001 to £88,000 then; anything above that is in band E or higher. A band tells you about the house. It doesn’t tell you what the household has coming in. Some in bands above D are quite comfortable, of course, but others are struggling.

Council tax bands are also not EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) bands, and don’t tell you about a home’s energy costs.

Many homes here in Uttlesford are more exposed to energy prices than most. Over a quarter of homes in the district aren’t on the gas grid, and at the 2021 Census about one in six households heated with oil alone. Heating oil isn’t covered by the energy price cap, and the Budget’s cut to VAT on electricity doesn’t apply to it.

The other £100m

The Budget also gives local authorities in England £100m to provide “targeted support to households acutely impacted by rising energy bills, some of whom are in council tax bands above A-D”.

This could reach people who miss out on the £100. As of yet, though, it’s not clear:

• what (if anything) Uttlesford’s share will be;
• whether it’ll be UDC or ECC that receives and distributes it;
• if people will need to apply, and how they would do that;
• when people might start receiving these payments.

I’m going to keep an eye out for answers. If they don’t appear, I’ll ask the councils directly. Either way, I’ll post an update once we know.

Sources

HM Treasury

• Budget 2026 — the Budget report (HC 726), 28 October 2026.

Valuation Office Agency

• Council Tax: stock of properties, 2025 — statistics (table CTSOP1.0, properties by band at 31 March 2025), 25 September 2025 (updated May 2026).
• Council Tax: stock of properties, 2025: background information — notes on the statistics, 25 September 2025.

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

• Subnational estimates of properties not connected to the gas network — statistics, updated 18 December 2025.

Office for National Statistics

• Census 2021, TS046: Central heating (Uttlesford and England) — census data, as a CSV file, via Nomis.

Footnotes

1. Our sums from the Valuation Office Agency’s figures for 31 March 2025: in Uttlesford, 22,460 of 40,790; in England, 20,815,830 of 25,754,280. They count homes, including empty ones and second homes, not households. Of England’s 296 councils, only 18 have a lower share, 12 of them in London or Surrey. Southend (85%) and Thurrock (88%), the two councils in Essex that ECC doesn’t cover, have higher shares too. The Government’s own estimate, “up to 20 million households” or “around 80%” of England’s, uses a different count, from MHCLG’s council taxbase. ↩