Herefordshire Council is one of the UK’s highest performers when it comes to collecting the council tax owed – achieving a collection rate of 98.5 per cent during the 2008/09 financial year, compared with the average for similar authorities of 96.7 per cent.
The figures, compiled by the independent Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), also show that Herefordshire collected 98.6 per cent of non-domestic rates due, compared with the average of 97.5 per cent. Herefordshire is the only county council in the country not to have suffered a fall in collection rates.
“The percentage of council tax collected is the only meaningful way of comparing performance between local authorities”, said Mike Toney, the council’s head of benefits and exchequer services. “This is because authorities vary in terms of population and so actual amounts are no indication of how good a council is at fulfilling its statutory duty of collecting council tax and non-domestic rates.
“No council could ever achieve a collection rate of 100 per cent and one of the reasons for this is that bills issued later in the financial year are unlikely to be paid before the end of March, so there is always an overhang in terms of a figure that will be collected in the next financial year.
“Herefordshire people have a strong sense of civic responsibility, so it’s only fair to those people who pay their council tax on time that we secure late payments as quickly as possible. The funds are also necessary in order to deliver over 800 different services locally, many of which are depended on by the most vulnerable members of the community”.
“While we recognise that there will be people who may find it difficult to pay their council tax, the message for the minority of people who can pay but won’t is that we will continue to be relentless in our pursuit of the money that is owed,” added Mike Toney.
This week (6 October 2009) a Hereford woman who admitted falsely claiming £14,500 in benefits was today given a 12-month community order when she appeared at Hereford Crown Court.