A staggering £30 million in taxes went uncollected by councils across the Westcountry last year.
The figure, revealed in a report compiled by the union GMB, has prompted calls for a new law to lead a crackdown on council and business tax evaders across the region.
Campaigners say the money, which was not paid to local authorities in Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, could make a vast difference to coffers at a time when jobs and services are under threat because of enforced savings.
The figures, released by the union representing public sector workers, show a shortfall of £29.34 million in the council tax and business rate collections for 2009-10.
In the South West, Cornwall Council comes top of the table, with nearly £10 million in uncollected taxes. But the councils highlighted by the report say they have continued to chase payments after the year end, and have closed the gap considerably. They also say it is unfair to compare large urban centres with smaller rural areas, because of the huge difference in the amount of tax they have to collect.
Richard Ascough, GMB regional secretary for the South West, said the region's 37 councils had clocked up a total of more than £88 million in uncollected taxes. He said: "This level of uncollected local taxes cannot be accepted at a time when there are deficits in the public finances which are giving rise to cuts in public services and job losses at a time of high unemployment."
The GMB has called for the rules to be revamped to make it "almost impossible" for people to avoid paying council tax.
"For example, landlords are not allowed to collect council tax from tenants when they pay rent. This means that short-term tenants can evade paying council taxes until they have left the property and make it difficult for councils to track them down," Mr Ascough said.
"Councillors, in past years, have dismissed this annual analysis by GMB and instead claimed to be doing very well.
"Instead they should join GMB in asking Parliament to change the rules to make non- payment virtually impossible. The poorest in our society and those on benefits have their local taxes paid by central government. So it is not a question of can't pay rather than won't pay."
The call for change was backed by the Taxpayers' Alliance. Spokesman Fiona McEvoy said: "With public finances under considerable strain it's vital that our councils don't allow money to slip through their fingers. In this case, the £30 million lost through uncollected council tax might otherwise have been spent protecting frontline services or saving staff from redundancy. It might be that we need to reform the way council tax is collected to make it more difficult to avoid, because local government just can't afford to haemorrhage this money every year."
In Cornwall, the GMB reported that the shortfall on council tax payments was nearly £5.97 million, while non-domestic taxes was £3.63 million.
Plymouth came next in the table, with a total of £7.68 million uncollected, while Torbay came in at £3.2 million. Across 11 councils, the total unpaid figure was £29.34 million. The GMB took the data from a Department for Local Government publication. They were calculated by subtracting the total receipts collected from the estimated net collectible debt in each case.
Yesterday, Cornwall Council pointed out that it was now the largest authority in the South West, and had the most council taxes and business rates to collect.
A spokesman said the figures were correct, but needed to be measured as a percentage to accurately assess the performance of an authority.
They said it was "hardly fair" to compare the Isles of Scilly, which collects £1.43 million in council tax each year, with Cornwall's £234.274 million – almost 200 times as much. Cornwall has collected 97.5 per cent of its for council tax and 97.1 per cent of business rates. It said it was ahead of other authorities, including Plymouth, in the region and was a "good performance" given that unitary authority was in its first year.
The council spokesman said the 2.5 per cent unpaid at the end of the year was still pursued.
Plymouth City Council has also continued to pursue payments beyond the end of the year, and says the total outstanding is now £3.2 million – more than half the GMB's figure.
"This equates to 96.5 per cent per cent of council tax, which is actually a one per cent improvement from 2008/09 despite the economic downturn, due to the hard work of staff, including GMB members, and our commitment to track down a hard core of non-payers and recover unpaid council tax."
.png)
