Councils write off £130m in tax

Haringey Council wrote off £6.4m in council tax debt last year

More than £130m of unpaid council tax was written off by English councils last year, it has been confirmed.

Authorities gave up chasing a total of £133,755,000 in 2007.

Haringey Council wrote off £6.4m, the largest amount by a single council, as part of £49.2m which went uncollected across London.

Councils in the north west recorded the next largest figure with £18.6m written off, while north east authorities fared best at £4.4m.

The figures showed outstanding tax which councils decided to stop chasing in 2007, including amounts outstanding from past years.

A Haringey Council spokesman said some of the debt it wrote off in 2007 related to council tax debt that was more than 10 years old.

COUNCIL TAX WRITE-OFF London - £49.2m North West - £18.6 South East - £17.1m South West £10.6m Yorkshire/Humber - £9.9m East of England - £9.2m East Midlands - £7.9m West Midlands - £6.7m North East - £4.4m Council-by-council breakdown

"We will not write off debt until all avenues are exhausted," the spokesman said.

"This does not mean that council tax in Haringey is higher than it would have been."

The spokesman added: "With the best will in the world a council will never collect all the money it is owed.

"But around 97% of council tax is collected in Haringey - around the same level as in other English boroughs."

Campaign group the TaxPayers' Alliance described the figures as "shocking".

"At a time when pensioners are being sent to jail for not being able to pay relatively small amounts, it is shocking that councils are happy to write off millions," a spokesman said.

"Council tax is putting an unsustainable burden on ordinary families, and allowing this hole in the budget to continue adds to that burden."

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government, which released the figures, said: "It is the responsibility of local councils to collect council tax and they work hard to ensure that collection rates are as high as possible."

He added that the body would "continue to work with local government to get even better results in the future".