16 January 2004
More than £550m worth of council tax in Scotland remains unpaid, although the collection rate has improved, the Accounts Commission has found.
According to performance information published by the commission this week, Scottish councils collected 91.5% of the tax in 2002/03, compared with 90.6% the previous year.
However, the figure is still less than in England where the collection rate in 2002/03 was 96.4%.
Commission chair Alastair MacNish said councils had performed better than ever before by collecting a higher proportion of the council tax due.
He described year-on-year improvements as 'very encouraging'. He added: 'However, the outstanding debt from previous years is still very significant. We urge councils to do as much as they can to collect council tax in the year it is due, because the longer that debts are outstanding, the harder they are to collect.'
The 91.5% collection level means that councils collected a total of £1.38bn out of £1.51bn in 2002/03. It was the fourth successive year that an improvement has been shown.
However, there are wide variations across Scotland. Collection figures ranged from 83.7% in Glasgow, Scotland's biggest local authority, to 97.7% in the Orkney Islands.
Of the other cities, Edinburgh collected 90.7%; Dundee 85.7% and Aberdeen, 90.1%.
In a report on the performance, the commission says the variation in collection levels between councils can be explained in part by factors such as social deprivation and population density which are outside their control.
But it stresses that other factors, such as the accuracy of records and the speed with which recovery procedures are initiated 'are directly within councils' control'.
Five councils reported the lowest collection levels over the period between 1996 and 2003. They were East Ayrshire (90.5%), Glasgow city (86.4%), Inverclyde (91.3%), North Ayrshire (91.9%) and West Dunbartonshire (87.8%).
The report shows that council tax and housing benefit claims were processed faster. The time to process new claims was down from 51 to 49 days, and 11 councils met the target for processing these claims within 36 days.
Four councils (Angus, Moray, North Ayrshire and West Dunbartonshire) took on average more than 70 days to process new claims.
PFjan2004
