Council tax collection letter
April 13, 2011
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This blog is used to compliment Croydon Council’s twitter feed (@yourcroydon) and is maintained by the communications team at Croydon Council.
Croydon Press Team 
Croydon’s financial accounts published on your official website confirm that between 2005/06 and 2009/10 some £35 million was uncollected.
It is of course worth looking back even further than this as far higher percentages of uncollected council tax relate to pre-2005. This was a time when collection rates were actually falling (2003/4 – 93.3% and 2004/5 – 92.8%). At this time Croydon was only ranked 26th in London.
Since then rates have steadily improved and targets have been set higher each year to keep the team striving to do better. All London borough’s are of course taking similar measures to improve, but Croydon has climbed six places in the rankings over this period.
Year Target Actual
2003/4 N/A 93.3%
2004/5 94.5% 92.8%
2005/6 94.5% 93.9%
2006/7 95.5% 94.7%
2007/8 96.25% 94.86%
2008/9 96.75% 95.35%
2009/10 96.5% 95.58%
So, you do do not dispute that the amounts of uncollected council tax are increasing from a low in 2007/08?
Here are the figures from your financial accounts:
2005/06 £7.2 million
2006/07 £7.1 million
2007/08 £6.2 million
2008/09 £6.8 million
2009/10 £6.9 million
ie, over five years, just under £35mn has been uncollected.
These figures are a mattter of record and are by no means exceptional when looked at average collection rates across London.
However as any statistician will explain, you always have to look at these rates as a percentage of the total that could potentially be brought in. As more properties are built (or re-occupied) the base figure (total collectable) rises above inflation each year.
This is why the government uses percentage rates and not cash totals to measure local authority performance – the measure by which this performnce has been shown to have improved every year after 2004/5.
We are always of course interested in sensible and practical suggestions that could help improve performance, so if you have anything that you think could be done better then please contact the revenues department with your ideas.