Council tax debt of £13.8m

Rochdale residents currently owe £13.8m in unpaid council tax – equivalent to an average of £150 per household – according to figures released by the National Debtline.

The debt is slightly up from last year’s figure of £13.7m.

National Debtline also confirmed that Rochdale is in the top 20% of local authorities for council tax arrears in England for 2014/2015.

The figures also show that a total of 522 calls for help with debt were made from the Rochdale Borough to the National Debtline in 2014.

According to National Debtline, council tax is now the fastest growing type of debt problem it is helping clients to resolve with 24 per cent of all callers now in arrears, up from 14 per cent in 2007.

Salford and Manchester are among the worst local authorities in the country when it comes to collecting council tax.

In Manchester, there was £12.3million outstanding (they collected 91.8 per cent of £146.7million) with a further £7.9million due in Salford (they collected 91.6 per cent of £93.7million).

Rochdale Council did not respond to a request for comment.