Just the Facts Cllr J Sharma
Cllr. J. Sharma, Hounslow's Leader, has the temerity to challenge my comments and by implication HM Govt figures regarding the UK Council Tax collection data. These figures showed Hounslow as having the fourth highest council tax debt per household in the UK - £325 per household. It is unbelievable that Cllr Sharma should claim Hounslow is 'One of the Best performing Councils in London'.He says “As a former teacher, I’m used to marking homework, and in this case I think I need to give Cllr Todd a D for his maths. The last few years have seen us collecting more historical debt than ever before - £4.5 million last year, compared to £2.5 million in 2008/09 when his party were in control of the council.“We have always said we are committed to recovering as much debt as we can, and we don’t write off historical debts like other authorities'. Councils have the powers to go back 20 years and this is what the Labour Group are doing.“Given this was fully explained to him by officers last week, it’s a shame he’s not willing to recognise the good work being done.”Well thats a severe put down if ever I saw one. I had better justify my case.1. The UK council tax collection average is 97.3%; LBH is 97.4%.2. As at the 30th April the Council tax debt in the LBH books was £31,497.000. This huge figure places LBH in the top four Councils with the biggest council tax debt.3. Cllr Sharma says we 'are collecting historical debt' and we 'don't write off historical debt'Well let's see what a senior officer said'We do indeed perform well and I suspect this leads to the obvious question of how can we perform so well yet regularly appear on the bad debt league tables. The answer is that we are not so good at writing debt off. We have a very long list of very old debt that the team have been asked to actively manage. Within the list are some recoverable sums and the £4.5m recovery shows that they have been successful in bringing the old debt down during 2012-13 and this is work that continues in 2013-14. However, over the years there is a considerable proportion of unrecoverable debt (e.g. bankruptcies, gone away, deceased etc) that has just sat on the balance sheet. Work is underway to consider future treatment of this'.This explanation does not corroborate Cllr Sharma's comments nor his harsh and clearly unjustified homework mark.LBH is not the leading performer in London and the existence of apparently worthless debt in its accounts may, amongst other things indicate that the recoverable /viable debt shown in the LBH accounts is incorrectly included.I have some time ago raised the viability and accuracy of this debt at Audit Committee. I will query it again.Before issuing puffy Press Releases Cllr Sharma should as Lead Member for Finance take the occasional look at the books.We would be happy to assist him if it would help. If he hadn't scrubbed the Scrutiny Finance and Performance sub committee we would have probed further. So has he got something to hide?As he is coming to the end of his so called leadership, I'll let others judge his performance. I think a period of detention is required
John Todd ● 4906d0 Comments ● 4906d