Council writes off £325,000 debts

BOROUGH Council chiefs at Warrington have written off a total of £325,074 irrecoverable debts.
The money is made up of council tax, £122,784 and other miscellaneous debts including housing benefit overpayments totalling £202,290.
Members of the council’s audit and governance committee will receive a report detailing the debt which has been written off next week.
A council spokesperson said it was the first time council tax debt has been written off by Warrington Borough Council since 2006.
Writing off debt was only undertaken as a last resort, at the end of a very long and comprehensive recovery process.
Since 2006, the council has collected £387 million of council tax. Debts of £122,784 are being written off, which is 0.03 per cent.
In many of these cases the debtor had died or left the area with no trace and the amounts were tiny when compared to the amount that had been collected.
Other miscellaneous debts were also written off including housing benefit overpayments which cannot be recovered. These debts total £202,290.90.
Cllr Russ Bowden (pictured) the council’s lead member for corporate resources and assignments, said: “We want to reassure local council tax payers that we are not writing off any debt that could and should have been collected. We have tried and tried again, through many methods, to collect the remaining money and we will only write off debt when all avenues of recovery have been exhausted.
“Our collection and recovery rate is very good, particularly in council tax, which has been consistently over 97 per cent. In the last year 97.1 per cent of council tax was collected or recovered, equating to £86 million. The figure we have written off in comparison to this is very small and these debts are at a stage where there are no other options and it would cost us more to keep trying to recover them.”