More than £1m of council tax owed to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council was not collected last year, according to a new report.
Figures released last week by trade union GMB show that the authority has £1.26m of outstanding, uncollected council tax from the year before.
Research carried out by the GMB found that nationally, the 326 councils across the UK were owed £1.1bn outstanding council tax.
Christine Melsom, chairwoman of Hampshire-based campaign group IsItFair, criticised the council for not brining the cash in.
“The council really need to pull their finger out,” she said. “Having amounts like this outstanding are really not good enough.”
In a regional breakdown of uncollected council tax, Basingstoke was ranked the 19th worst offender out of 67 councils in the South East. Hart District Council was ranked 46th, with £811,000 outstanding.
In a statement, the authority said it was continuing efforts to bring the money in.
“These outstanding balances have reduced each month as a result of on-going recovery action,” a spokesperson said. “We are continuing with recovery and enforcement action, and will do so until all remedies have been exhausted.”
But the figures were described as a “disgrace” by regional GMB secretary Richard Ascough who called for reforms in collection methods.
“It is a scandal,” he said. “Urgent reforms to assist hard press council staff to collect these taxes are long overdue.”
Last year the borough council was criticised for writing off £1m of bad debts, including £360,344 of unpaid council tax, because it could not trace people.
The borough’s finance chief, Councillor Ranil Jayawardena, said: “We take the issue of pursuing debts very seriously, so we try to recover as much money as possible.
“However, once all reasonable recovery procedures have been exhausted, we do reach a point where some debts become very difficult and costly to recover.”
