Authority is owed £24m in unpaid council tax

Medway Council says it has had to cut services and spend reserves to make ends meet

A local authority in Kent said it has missed out on £24m in unpaid council tax from the last six years.

Medway Council said there was £10m unpaid from the last financial year and a further £14m more since 2019.

A council spokesperson said it was "employing all means necessary to get it".

The authority reported it had successfully collected £181.4m in council tax last year from 120,583 properties.

It said just over 19,000 council tax accounts had an unpaid amount due at the end of the 2023/24 financial year.

The missing amount represents 5% of the total revenue collected from council tax, the spokesperson said.

Medway Council has faced financial problems in recent years, and said it has had to cut services and spend reserves to make ends meet.

Last month, the first round of budget monitoring predicted the authority would overspend its budget by £16.5m, a figure which needs to come down before February, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Medway Council closed Rochester Visitor Centre in April due to budget cuts

In November the authority said it was hiring an officer to review council tax accounts with the single-payer discount and estimated it would bring in £800,000 from those who didn’t deserve it.

A council spokesman said: “We regularly collect 94 to 95% of the current year’s council tax in-year but we continue to collect any outstanding debt in subsequent years.

“Our final collection rate for each year is around 99% which is comparable with most other councils.”