EXCLUSIVE by Alex Claridge

More than £6m in taxes and rates owed to Canterbury City Council and Swale Borough Council remains unpaid, according to figures released by the GMB union this week.

The GMB has carried out research into every local authority in the South East and produced a table which shows Swale Borough Council were ranked fifth with a total of £5,334,000 unpaid to the authority for the financial year 2008/9.

But the amount of debt has been inflated by the the re-valuation of the Sheerness Docks rating assessment.

Spokesman Mark James said: “The debt incurred is subject to a repayment period over eight years and is totally out of Swale Borough Council’s control.

“Indeed, this is a central government issue and Swale Borough Council is merely the collection agency.”

Mr James added: “All efforts are being made to increase collection of domestic council tax. We are proactive in contacting customers who have fallen behind in payment of their council tax and we discuss mutually acceptable payment arrangements in order that any outstanding amounts are cleared as quickly as possible."

With £1.144 million outstanding, Canterbury has the 54th highest amount owed to it.

Unpaid council tax accounts for £722,000 of the total with unpaid business rates of £422,000 making up the rest.

The city council’s local taxation manager Claire Hawken said: “Last year’s collection rate for council tax was 98.8 per cent, which equated to us collecting in excess of £60.2m in a year.

“For business rates the collection rate was 99.1 per cent, which also equated to us collecting in excess of £43m, in year.

“The outstanding monies for council tax of £722,000 and business rates of £422,00 are large sums, but when taken in comparison to the actual amount collected, does help to give some perspective to those figures.

A total of £1.059 billion is uncollected for the 2008/9 financial year in the whole of England with Birmingham having the highest unpaid bill at more than £25 million. The figure for the south-east is £143 million with Brighton and Hove having the highest at £7.1 million.

For more reaction and the full story, read this week's Kentish Gazette and Faversham News.