MORE than £5m of council tax has gone unpaid in Oxford and the shortfall in county coffers should be made up by district councils, a top councillor has said.

At the end of the last financial year on March 31, 2014, the amount in arrears at Oxford City Council stood at £5,029,912 – half of the £10,644,814 the authority expects to collect this year.

And Cherwell District Council has £2.6m outstanding.

The missing millions have come to light only days after the county council revealed it was cutting £20m of services between now and 2017/18.

Council tax is collected by the four districts and the city councils for themselves, the county and Thames Valley Police.


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County council deputy leader Rodney Rose said those councils should make up any deficit from their own coffers, instead of leaving the county with a financial blackhole. He said:

“The idea that we would not have to raise council tax if this money was paid is a lovely idea, but Utopia is never going to happen.

“What we should actually do is make sure that the district councils give us all the money.

“The district councils should meet those cuts to us rather than us having to meet it.”

Last week county councillors voted to raise council tax by 1.99 per cent, a change which it is expected will bring in about £3.2m extra in the next financial year.

City council deputy leader Ed Turner said Mr Rose’s proposal about district’s footing the shortfall was “daft”.

He said: “It is clearly a daft suggestion that all the council tax risk should be borne by district councils, rather than shared across the authorities which benefit from it.

“I would have thought Rodney would have had better things to dream up in his spare time.

“We do collect the overwhelming amount of tax. I would like to get to 100 per cent but of course that is very hard.

“Clearly the number of people being in council tax arrears is a worry and as a council we will pursue dealing with this through the courts if necessary.”

The city council issued 8,273 court summons to people who had not paid their council tax during 2014, with 5,898 liability orders issued.

Liability orders give the council the power to force people to cough up, sometimes resorting to bailiffs or even asking for people to be jailed.

This is an increase from 6,385 court summons and 4,549 liability orders in 2013.

Blackbird Leys resident Mark Cooper said it was unfair that some people did not pay their share of council tax.

The full-time father-of-two said: “It is a problem because you pay your own way but other people do not.

“It is annoying because they get the same level of service.

“But I think the county council would put tax up no matter what. I think they are money-grabbing.

“It does annoy me because of the way we pay and they do not spend the money sensibly.”

Cherwell District Council also saw slightly more liability orders issued in 2014, with 4,173 issued by courts compared to 3,689 the year before. Cherwell has £2.6m in arrears.

The number of liability orders also rose in West Oxfordshire - up from 1,267 to 1,682- and in the Vale of White Horse - up from 2,092 to 2,342.

South Oxfordshire District Council saw a slight decrease, with 2,304 liability orders issued compared to 2,401 the previous year. Vale of White Horse District Council leader Matthew Barber said:

“Some people we cannot collect from for good reasons and some for other reasons like fraudulent ones.

“I can understand where Rodney Rose is coming from. “It is a problem, particularly in the city. We want to work with the other districts and the city council to make sure we get value for money.”

How it works

Council tax is set by bodies known as “precepting authorities” such as English county, district, town and parish councils, unitary authorities, fire authorities and the Greater London Authority.

It is then collected by the district councils or unitary authorities. 

In England there are eight bands of council tax, based on how much the house being billed was worth on April 1, 1991.

In Oxfordshire about 73 per cent of council tax goes to the county council, 17 per cent to the districts, parish and town councils, and 10 per cent to the Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner.

What it could fund 

The missing £5m could pay for:

  • Most of the redevelopment of Frideswide Square, which will cost £5.5m
  • Cuts to Oxfordshire County Council’s children, education and families services, where £3.7m of savings were approved last week
  • Cuts to the county council’s road maintenance budget, where £3m of savings were approved
  • Five years of allowances for county councillors