£60,000 'irrecoverable' tax written off by Cannock Chase Council

Business rate arrears worth more than £34,000 and £19,769.63 in uncollected council tax has been deemed “irrecoverable”, alongside £6,197.03 in benefit overpayment, a report to Thursday’s Cannock Chase Council cabinet meeting said.

The report added: “Overpayments of housing benefit are usually caused by claimants claiming more money than they are entitled to, or not informing us of changes to their circumstances, as they should, when they become entitled to smaller payments rather than this council overpaying an individual.

“Officers do take actions to make sure, as far as they can, that claimants notify us of changes, but sometimes claimants do not contact us. As a result, we have to recharge their benefit, after the event.

"The council must and does seek the repayment of benefits that have been overpaid, and an amount of £222,785.22 was recovered in the first quarter of this financial year.

“Legislation has been amended in recent years to permit the use of Department of Work and Pensions and HMRC records to trace benefit overpayment debtors and recover the sums due.

"This has contributed to increased rates of recovery and we await legislation permitting the use of this data for the recovery of other debts owed to the council.”

The latest figures for the level of council tax and business rates for 2019/20 collected during the first half of the year were welcomed by cabinet members.

And it was also revealed that the authority came out on top in Staffordshire when it came to the time taken to process new benefit claims in 2018/19.

Councillor Christine Martin, cabinet member for health and wellbeing, said: “I’m very pleased with these figures if we are collecting more than half the amounts due in half the year. Congratulations to the officers in what they have achieved with this.

“The second part of the report is the rates listed (to be written off) and council tax arrears where people have died or moved out of the area.”

Council leader George Adamson said: “I think the collection rate is excellent – we have half in half of the year which is really good work. We will never get 100 per cent but we are getting as near as we can go.”