Record amount of council tax owed

Charnwood Borough Council had £2,442,000 uncollected

COUNCILS in Leicestershire are owed a record amount of council tax, with residents in Leicester some of the least likely in the country to pay their bill.

New government figures have revealed that local authorities in the area are now owed £42.3m in council tax arrears between them.

The amount is a cumulative figure, and as well as including any money that went unpaid in the last tax year it includes arrears that could stretch as far back as the introduction of council tax in 1993.

The money owed has risen from £38.3m as of

March 2019, and is an increase of 68% from £25.2m in March 2013, when comparable records began.

Poor collection rates in parts of Leicestershire are likely contributing to the fact the amount owed is soaring.

The figures revealed that Charnwood Borough Council had a council tax collection rate of 97.6%, with £2,442,000 uncollected and total arrears of £6,148,000 as of March.

North West Leicestershire District Council’s collection rate also stood at 97.6%, with £1,477,000 uncollected and total arrears of £4,268,000.

Leicester has one of the worst collection rates in England, with only 94.7% of council tax collected in 2019/20 - the lowest rate in over a decade.

That compares to a national average of 96.8% of council tax collected across all local authorities in England.

Harborough had the highest collection rate in Leicestershire, at 98.4%.

Councils across Leicestershire estimated that they could collect £566.2m last year - if everyone paid the council tax they were supposed to.

However, non-payments in 2019/20 totalled £16.4m.

Most councils when they set their budgets do not expect to collect 100% of the council tax for which they bill residents, but lower than expected collection rates could leave a hole in the budget.

Local authorities across England collected a total of £31.1 billion in council tax for 2019/20 - leaving more than £1.0 billion unpaid.

So far only 290 authorities have submitted data on arrears, so a total for the country is unavailable.

However, for those 290 councils the amount sums to £3.6 billion.

That’s already much higher than the £3.2 billion of arrears across all councils in March last year, even with the missing local authorities - and up from £2.5 billion in March 2013.