£15m in unpaid council tax to be 'written off' by Stoke-on-Trent City Council

“"The city council has admitted it allowed debts to build while focusing too much on its year-on-year targets."

Good old performance targets!

What's the first thing any organisation is going to do when they're played off against another organisation, in this instance with collection rates?

The objective of beating a neighbouring council's score becomes the primary objective over collecting the actual money. There will always be a way to better performance scores which is not necessarily reaching the objective of why targets were introduced in the first place.

Obviously this has happened here. Debt from previous years has been made less of a priority whilst the focus has been on the target enhancing in year targets. Not so indicative of money collected then are they, these collection rates.”

“These Freedom of Information article are insane....

Maybe its correct from an accounting perspective but it bears absolutely no resemblance to what is actually going on.

All these quoted £millions in arrears, owing or dodged are pretty much meaningless. The article doesn't tell you how much of the supposed debt is attributable to people who have died, absconded, in prison or any number of othet reasons which pretty much make it impossible or cost prohibative to collect.

It's also insane when council's or newspapers report that £x million is outstanding in council tax as of the xth of two thousand and whatever.

In these instances you could wipe out almost the entire figure by accounting for the money owed purely as a consequence of councils withdrawing instalment facilities. In fact this element of supposed outstanding money owed is technically not outstanding debt. It will be down to slack payers or householders struggling to hit instalment due dates, having the added pressure of paying the entire years liability in one go and consequently being forced into paying additional fees for court costs and bailiffs when they obviously cant do it (it's a revenue trap set by the MoJ).

In these cases majority of the money will have been paid by the end of the financial year despite court action and bailiff enforcement. The only reason they throw around summonses like confetti is because they probably make a couple of hundred thousand pounds a month in court cost each month.”

“stoke on trent council are useless at budgeting where our council tax is spent anyway...mr joinson says "people would soon notice if their bins don't get emptied and there are no police or fire service" well council tax went up yet again but most of the services across staffordshire have been
cut back, does that mean next year we will get a reduction!! i don't think so £40 million has to be made to fund yet another move from the civic centre!!”

“where is the incentive to pay your council taxes if these clowns are too ignorant to collect what is already owed ?”

“So "Members have agreed to review and write-off debts every six months to avoid large amounts of long-term debt lying on file in future." there not going to aim collect more just write it off more often.”

“My am I bothering to pay my Council Tax?”

“Great I'll stop paying my poll tax and see if they write it off in a few years because they are too bone idle to collect it.”