City beats the average over tax collection
Council tax collection rates in Gloucester are beating the national average, Goverment figues show.
The news came as Local Government Secretary Stephen Byers said councils with poor tax recovery rates would be asked to explain themselves. My Byers and the Local Goverment Association announced that there would be an initiative to improve tax collection rates. "I believe some councils could do a lot more to improve their collection performance," he said.
"Overall, tax collection had improved slightly and many councils are making a great effort. But half a billion pounds wasn't collected last year - that's money that could have been spent on local services."
Gloucester City Council is producing collection figures exceeding the national average. Nationally an average of 95.8% of domestic council tax was collected, compared with the Gloucester collection rate of 96.6% for domestic taxes.
Head of revenue and benefits at the city council Ashley Green said: "We are very pleased with the results and it is a testimony to the hardworking staff at Gloucester City Council."
Gloucester did not rank within the top 30 councils in England for tax collection. But Mr Green said this was not a primary concern. He said: "Taking account of the deprivation and poverty in the city, tax collection shoul also be about acting sympathetically to individuals' financial circumstances."
The city council has made a 1.1% improvement on last financial year's tax recovery rates and hopes to reach 98.2% by 2005. My Byers said he would be encouraging the more successful councils to help those local authorities which were under-achieving with their collection of taxes.
Gloucester as a Charter Mark council would be involved in this. In addition, collection rates for non-domestic, or business tax, were also released on Friday for each local authority. They showed Gloucester's tax collection results were consistently successful.
The city was performing at levels higher than the national average, recovering 98.6% of business tax in the local area, compared with 97.4% of taxes collected across England as a whole.