Gwynedd Council efficient over tax
FOLLOWING the article published in Monday’s Western Mail regarding council tax arrears, I have now had the opportunity to look into the matters your reporter raised with me over the phone late on Friday afternoon.
As was made clear in the article, Gwynedd Council actively and robustly pursues any unpaid council tax. There is no annual “cut-off point” and we carry out this work as a continuous and ongoing process using the full range of recovery options available to us. The article referred to Gwynedd Council’s assumed collection rate of 99%; as the Welsh Government’s document makes clear, this includes the collection of amounts after the yearend (compared, for example, with our “in-year” collection rate of 97.3% for 2016/17). I remain confident that Gwynedd’s assumed collection rate, which is one of the highest in Wales, is realistic.
Based on previous years, we are confident that at least 40% of the £3.794m that was outstanding on March 31, 2017, will be recovered during the current financial year, and that the vast majority of the remaining sums will be recovered in subsequent years. While we use a combination of the options available to us to collect arrears, we aim to do so sympathetically, in the knowledge that many individuals may be experiencing financial difficulties, and we encourage taxpayers to pay their arrears in a way which avoids the use of lawyers and enforcement
agents wherever possible.
Western Mail readers can be assured that this recovery work will mean that only a very small percentage will have to be eventually “written off” as “bad debt”. This would only be in a very small number of cases where the legal costs for the council would be far greater than the outstanding debt we would be likely to recover.
Finally, I would also point out that the Welsh Government report referred to in Monday’s article clearly shows that the amount of council tax outstanding for every household that is liable to pay council tax (chargeable dwellings) is lower in Gwynedd than in some neighbouring north Wales authorities. Peredur Jenkins Cabinet Member for Finance Gwynedd Council