Councils ‘losing millions’ in unpaid tax
Local councils in England failed to collect more than £800 million in council tax and rents last year, the GMB union warns today.
The local government union is now calling for councils to be given more power to make landlords responsible for ensuring that their tenants pay their council tax and that rents are collected in advance to prevent people absconding without paying.
Justin Bowden, GMB senior public services organiser, believes the extra money collected under these powers could help plug the pensions gap in local government, removing the need to raise the pensions age from 60 to 65.
Raising the retirement age was one of the possible solutions to the pensions crisis put by Adair Turner, who is heading up the government-appointed commission that is due to report on the problem this autumn.
“The local authority pension scheme needs £200 million per annum to enable it to pay pensions to GMB members without cutting benefits or raising the retirement age,” Mr Bowden said.
“If councils could collect the monies that they are owed they could easily fix the pension gap problem. GMB want to see councils collecting all the monies they are owed for the council tax and council rents.”
He added: “GMB is not prepared to see people cheating the system to the detriment of our members.”
The worst offending council in the GMB research was Birmingham, which lost £26.5 million in uncollected revenue in the financial year 2003/4. Five of the worst ten were in London, while Manchester, Nottingham City, Liverpool and Leeds were all found to have clocked up at least £10 million in uncollected revenue.
