Greenwich fails to collect £4.9m in Council Tax
Why is Greenwich Council so bad at collecting Council Tax? According to figures from the GMB Union it is among the bottom 20 Council in the country (see note 3 in link). During 2005/06 the total Council Tax that was not collected was £4.9m. That's nearly £5m of tax the Council is NOT collecting. What we thought particularly ironic was that the figures are on the GMB site and apparently - assuming we've got our facts right - they just happen to be the last people to employ Chris Roberts before he foisted himself on to the taxpayer of Greenwich.
Of course there is a much wider point here. If the Council is failing to collect such large sums of money, why have there been yearly increases in the Council Tax to gain extra funds that are a fraction of the arrears? Perhaps the Council should concentrate on arrears rather than regular rises?
Labels: arrears, Council tax
posted by greenwich.watch at 10:06 pm
2 Comments:
Dear God, is there no one watching the shop? I thought that Councillors were elected to, well, ensure that the Council was run properly on behalf of the residents. To whom can we complain?
Greenwich having £5m less than it should have means that the living environment and services and DEMOCRACY suffer because there is no money to maintain them. (And full Council meetings are cancelled even when there are things to discuss - is ANYONE going to answer the Mayor's misleading letter in one of this week's free newspapers?)
I have just offered to find sponsorship for (and, meanwhile, underwrite the cost of) a replacement tree in my road - where we have recently lost two street trees - because, otherwise, we would not even be considered for replacement trees for another two years, if then.
This is not socialism. We need Ken Livingstone to ride in and bang Labour Group heads together. IS THERE NO ONE WATCHING THE SHOP?!
Just to put that figure into perspective... total CT receipts in 2005/06 were £73 million. So that £5 million, if collected, would have been enough to give us all a 6% discount. Or £6 a month off a Band D property.
And, if you're not angry enough already, you may be amused that the pension assumptions in the financial statements for 2005/06 assume wage inflation of 4.8% per year (p.55 in the notes if you're interested). Anyone else getting a 4.8% pay rise this year? Thought not...
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