Annual Report - Home
Introduction About our City Running the City Performance Funding Council Services Assessments Contact Us
 
 

Uncollected council tax

 
     
 

Figures produced by the GMB reinforce the fact that Worcester City has been successful in reducing the amount of uncollected Council Tax left outstanding for the year. The real story behind the GMB’s headline figures is that there has been a very significant increase in the performance of the City Council’s Revenue Collection Team during 2006/07.

  • The City Council has reduced the uncollected amount of Council Tax by 2.1% in the face of an overall increase in the Council Tax of 4.9% - i.e. a real improvement of almost 7% over the previous year.
  • Since April this year Worcester City Council has continued to chase these debts and have now reduced the uncollected amount for 2006/07 to £700K i.e. a further 35%.
  • Collection of prior year debts is up by about 70% on the previous year.
  • The trend of improvement since April has continued and collection rates are already 0.4% up on last year and heading for a 1% improvement by the year end i.e. a projected £¾m uncollected at the end of the year – a projected improvement of 30%.
  • The City Council is set to further add strength to its process for chasing and recovering bad debts by commencing bankruptcy proceedings of some of our long term persistent debtors. If they are made bankrupt they could loose their homes. This is very much a last resort, but necessary in some cases.
Grahame Lucas, Head of Finance at Worcester City Council said: “We are aware that there is a problem with uncollected council tax but clearly it is a national issue that all local authorities have to deal with. The City Council is certainly not blasé about this but the figures quoted by the GMB have to be viewed in context and the fact is that for 2006/07 our rate of council tax collection was 96.98%; an increase of 0.58% compared to the previous year. Furthermore we are continually looking at ways of improving our collection methods and are confident that the forthcoming creation of shared financial services with our neighbouring districts of Wychavon and Malvern Hills will help in this situation.”