Council is owed £3M in council tax arrears

Past Due, debt grows out of control

Rochdale Borough Council is currently owned £3M in unpaid council tax, it has been revealed.

Rochdale Online reported yesterday (Wednesday 7 January) how over 10,000 residents have been summoned to court in the past year for failing to keep up with their payments.
It was reported how 3000 of these people had been visited by bailiffs.

Councillor Greg Couzens, cabinet member for finance, explained that court action is a “last resort”, and that the council can not ignore rising debts.

He said: “"We have a duty to all council taxpayers across the borough because if collection rates were to dip it would mean that council tax would have to rise for everyone, simply because a few didn't pay.

“It’s important to note that the vast majority of people do pay what they owe, with more than 95% of bills being settled in full on time last year”.

"Court action is always a last resort and with people who have a history of non-payment. People struggling to pay bills are given as much leeway as possible. We always try to work out an acceptable payment programme that allows people to pay off debt over a longer period of time and in a way that suits them.

“The last thing we want to do is to go through long drawn-out and expensive legal proceedings. Anyone struggling to pay should call us as soon as they can to stop these kinds of problems building up”.

“This information was supplied by the council as part of a request under the Freedom of Information Act back in April last year. Since that time, we have continued to consider bankruptcy as a remedy for non-payment - but only in cases where we have evidence that the debtor is able to pay, but won’t.

We have issued quite a few ‘petitions for bankruptcy’ but only a very small number - 8 in the last year – have actually ended up with the debtor being bankrupted”.