Perth and Kinross Council writes off £2m-plus in bad debts

More than £2 million of bad debt has been written off by Perth and Kinross Council.

The local authority has been unable to recover a total of £2,190,578 in council tax, rent, housing benefit overpayments and car parking penalty notices.

The figure also includes more than £10,000 of obsolete stock. Approving the write-off, council leader Ian Miller advised that it represented just over 1% of total income and that, despite the debt levels, council tax collection had actually risen to 96.63%.

He said: “Although the council endeavours to collect all the debt due to it, and we have a good record in doing so, there are inevitably occasions when this is not possible.

“You can see that the levels of write-off have risen compared with last year and that is, I believe, a consequence of the current financial climate. If, for example, we look at the amount billed for council tax over the last 20 years, the write-off represents less than 0.23% of that total.”

Councillor Mac Roberts also gave the report his backing.

He said that the write-off “made a lot of sense”.

Mr Roberts added: “There’s no point us looking like we’re better off than we are.”