Hackney was the third-worst Inner London Borough for uncollected council tax last year, and the seventh-worst in England.
As the council slashed this year’s budget by £44m, government figures reveal £32.8m in council tax remains unpaid from the borough over the last five years.
The council has blamed Hackney’s transient population for the uncollected bills
The figures were released earlier this month following a parliamentary request by Conservative MP Andrew Griffiths to discover the ten local authorities that collected the lowest proportion of council tax.
In Hackney, 7.6 per cent went uncollected last year from an estimated net collectible debt of £68.3m, meaning £4.9m was left owing.
The money could have been spent on hard hit public services. According to the Department for Education the estimated cost of a new free school, such as the one proposed for Clapton/Homerton, is £15m. And if the £4.9m had been collected last year, the new state-of-the-art Stoke Newington Young People’s Centre could have been built nine times over.
The 92.8 per cent that was collected last year is lower than the national average collection of 97.1 per cent and shows no improvement on the borough’s collection total in the previous year, which also stood at 92.8 per cent.
Manchester had the worst record last year with 90.9 per cent council tax collected while Lewisham and Southwark were the worst London boroughs, gathering 91.8 per cent.
A spokesperson for Hackney Council, said: “Inevitably, in an area with a transient population, and with a high proportion of rented accommodation, some non-payers move without paying their council tax and without advising us of a forwarding address.”
They said the council follows strict procedures when bills are outstanding, including issuing reminders, final notices and in extreme cases, use of bailiffs or bankruptcy.
The spokesperson said the figures related to the collection rate as of 31 March of the given year and collection continued after this date.
They added added that the council has since collected around £250k of last year’s unpaid tax: “The collection rate is continuing to improve year on year and we continue to collect unpaid tax from previous years.”
Glyn Harries of the campaign group Hackney Solidarity Network said: “Hackney has a significant poor and massively transient population and to achieve a 93 per cent collection rate I think is pretty amazing.”
He added that he was more concerned with multi-billion pound tax evasion by corporations than Hackney’s uncollected council tax bill.
“It’s this collection failure that impacts most heavily on the people of Hackney, not the council’s failure to bump up its council tax collection ,” he said.
Tory councillor Semche Steinberger added that it would be impossible to collect council tax from everyone.
Council tax was frozen for this financial year after the council approved controversial budget reductions amid protests earlier this month.
