Kirklees Council owed £1m in unpaid business rates

BUSINESSES in Huddersfield town centre currently owe Kirklees Council almost £1 million in unpaid business rates, the Examiner can reveal.

Following a Freedom of Information request by a town centre businessman, Kirklees Council has revealed that the outstanding debt for the HD1 postcode for the current financial year is £936,542.88.

Leading Kirklees councillor Andrew Cooper, who is leader of the Green Party group on the council, said he would be asking council officers to provide further details and a breakdown of the figures.

He said there was a problem with businesses leaving substantial business rates arrears when they go bust.

He added: “It would be interesting to know more about this and I will be asking for further details of these arrears – in particular how many businesses are in operation for less than a year.

“Ultimately it’s money that comes back to local government after initially going into central government coffers. We get a significant proportion of it back.”

The figure was revealed as council taxpayers in Kirklees face a 6% rise in bills from April.

Clr Cooper, who represents the Newsome ward which includes the town centre, said: “The problem is companies starting up and then going into liquidation and leaving a substantial amount of business rates arrears.”

In August last year the Examiner reported that Kirklees writes off millions of pounds in unpaid council tax, business rates and rent every year. Last year £5.8 million was said to be “unrecoverable.” That included £1.4 million in business rates.

In 2015/16 the council wrote off a total of £6.8m and £8.9m the year before suggesting the council is getting better at collecting outstanding debts.

Kirklees leader Clr David Sheard defended the council’s procedures saying: “If you check in the past what the collection rates are you can see that we are quite good at it.”

On the £1m currently owed by town centre businesses he said: “It’s not that significant really and we collect as much as we can.

“Sometimes we have to write off large amounts of money because of companies going out of business and that’s always been a big problem, companies going bankrupt.

“We have to report every year to central government regarding council tax and business rates and when you look at the collection rates for other authorities we do well when compared with other authorities.”