Brent Council recently signed a deal with Crapita Business Services for council tax and business rates administration and IT support systems. Reported to be worth £15m over 5 years, the function of the contract is to increase the council tax collection rate, with Crapita giving a guaranteed a collection rate for council tax and an anticipated £4.6 million in savings for the Council over the initial term of the contract.
The Council General Purposes Committee recently set the 2011/12 collection rate for council tax at 97.5%, as it has been since 2001/02. As you can see, in recent years there is still a considerable way to go to reach 97.5% and apart from 2009/10 the collection is still considerably short of the 97.5%
target.
Let’s hope the arrangement with Crapita can squeeze out the extra 2% that Brent Council can’t quite manage. I wonder what the collection rate guarantee for council tax is… and if its 97.5% or greater…
Figures on page 6 of Public Document Pack downloaded from Agenda and minutes pages of General Purposes Committee Tuesday, 25 January 2011 7.00 pm.