Council tax collection on the rise

Manchester City Council collected almost £108m towards council tax last year, an increase of more than £8m on the previous year.

Two million of this is down to improved collection performance by the council.

Of the 214,000 domestic properties in the city, the council collected almost 90% of the amount due in the year - an increase of almost 2% and one of the largest in year percentage increases in the country. To achieve this the Council had to issue more than 70,000 summonses in a bid to collect money owed.

The money not collected within the year is not lost to the Council as there is a robust approach to pursuing arrears including attachment of earnings orders, bailiff enforcement and bankruptcy action.

Last year the council recovered more than £7m in arrears owed from previous years (an increase of more than half a million pounds compared with the year before) and this figure is expected to increase again in the next year.

Councillor Bernard Priest, Executive member for Finance for Manchester City Council says: "Manchester has particular challenges when collecting council tax, due in part to a large transient population, levels of poverty and people coming on and off benefits.

"Having said that, we take a forceful approach to recovery and comparisons with other councils show that we are doing as much, if not more, to improve our collection results."

He adds: "We have delivered Council Tax increases below the rate of inflation for the last 9 years and we have the second lowest Council Tax rate within Greater Manchester.

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