More than £8 million of public money has been written-off as uncollectable by Caerphilly County Borough Council since 2012.
The figure, obtained by Plaid Cymru under the Freedom of Information Act, reveals that almost 30,000 individual cases were written-off.
In a single case last month, £20,000 was written off by the cabinet.
The council has said debts were only written-off as a last resort.
Over the last five years the write-offs were:
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£1,327,944 in council tax.
£2,752,420 in non-domestic business rates.
£1,967,805 in sundry debts.
£522,643 in housing benefit overpayments.
£1,440,498 in housing rents.
Councillor Colin Mann, leader of the Plaid Cymru group on Caerphilly council, said: “People will find these figures quite staggering because this is money which effectively has been lost to the council for the delivery of services.
“We recognise that the council does go to great lengths to recover money but obviously the decision to write-off debts does have a serious impact at a time of spending cuts.
“I do have concerns that in the last financial year the amount of housing benefit overpayments written off as uncollectable more than doubled to £177,677.
“The amount lost in housing rents totalling £1.5m must have an impact on services to other tenants.
“Also, I want assurances that tenants who owe money which is written-off should not be housed again by the authority.”
Around £4.6m in money owed to the council was written-off between 2008 and 2012 when Plaid Cymru were in control of the council.
Council leader Dave Poole has hit back at Plaid and said: “The Nationalists have a very short memory and seem to have forgotten that they wrote-off more than £4.6m in debt in just four years between 2008 and 2012.
“Unlike the Nationalists administration, Labour Caerphilly between 2012 and 2017 faced the twin effects of the recession and Westminster’s austerity cuts. This has led to not only Caerphilly but all local authorities having in to make difficult decisions to write-off debts.”
He added: “I await with eager anticipation Cllr Mann’s proposal at the next council meeting on how this council could collect 100% of all debts and not have to resort to write-offs.”
A spokesman for Caerphilly County Borough Council said: “The council works hard to recover all money due to the authority and every effort is made to collect arrears.
“For example, we collected over 99% of council tax payments over the past three years. We only write-off debts as a last resort once every other avenue has been exhausted.”
This, plus the fact that they now intend to defer over half a million pounds of proposed cuts ( storing up additional problems for the future )shows that the ruling Labour members in control are not fit to govern.
They are putting off financial necessities in favour of popularity !
Every large organisation writes off some debt, it’s sometimes more costly to attempt recovery than the debt is worth. What private companies tend to do with such debts is sell the liability to a debt collection company, thus recovering some of the money. Maybe the council does this too but there is no mention of it in the article.
I can understand that it gets to a point where recovering the debt can cost more than the amount of the actual debt involved and it is written off.
Following on from your comments it would be nice to know if :-
1 The council sells the liability on to a debt collection agency ?
2 How much individual debt is allowed to accrue before they make the
decision to pursue that debt ?( ie: should that debt be pursued
sooner,giving a lower potential write off ? )
Yes, it would be nice to know the details, John. On your second point I have found that if I am late with a community tax payment the council sends a demand pretty quickly, so they seem to be ‘on the ball’ regarding money owed. Other than that I have no knowledge of the procedure used to recover debt.
What about all the monies paid to the Three councillors suspended for fiddling their pay rises over the last Three years.What a waste of tax payers money!!!
I agree with you Mark, though I don’t know if the word ‘fiddling’ is allowed on this online newspaper. It is actually much longer than three years. At the start of the scandal I predicted this would run and run. I have unfortunately been proven right. The published cost has run into £ Millions and the unpublished cost, pension contributions, etc, will add to the bill that you and I pay.
This whole debacle has been a complete dereliction of duty by the council leadership.
Why didn’t CCBC recoup monies owed via attachment of earnings for those in employment and deduct weekly or monthly amounts from those on benedits. ……I was medically retired from the NHS and got awarded an ill health retirement pension from the NHS. It was backdated to when I finished work . Due to the backdated money they paid I had £4476 overpayment of HB cos I informed CCBC from the date I had my 1st payment & should have given the date that it was backdated to….I agreed to pay back the owed amount at rate of £10pw that was deducted out of my HB award & took me 8yrs+ to pay it back….so writing this huge sum of debt off is ridiculous ……especially with the scandal of their top bosses suspended on full pay for many years whilst under investigation…..all this money gone to waste which could have provided more council properties for residents considering the current situation & the fact that CCBC haven’t got enough council housing etc….just my opinion xx