Revealed: The Reason Why Council Tax Collection Has Been So Poor?

Well done to councillors at Scrutiny on Monday 18th November.

Interrogating the poor performance of Newham Council in collecting council tax it was revealed that the reason behind this is that staff are only in the office two or three days a week!!!!

We earlier revealed that the poor collection rate meant that Newham lost up to £5m a year, for seven years. One sitting councillor has opined to these columns that the mayor is very good at spending money, not quite so good at collecting it.

Imagine, if Newham had continued to collect the tax that was owed at the collection rate inherited by the current mayor, (96%), then they might not have needed to go cap in hand to Whitehall pleading poverty.

Or they could have kept tax rises within the statutory bounds, saving every family which pays the tax hundreds of pounds a year.

But the political focus has been on virtue signaling.  

During the Covid lockdown, many businesses allowed staff to work from home. So did Newham. After Covid, employers began to demand that staff be at their desks. There was some embarrassment for local councils when it was found that 1,358 council employees had been allowed to work remotely, from abroad.

So far as we know, this was not the case in Newham. However, it does seem that working from home has contributed to, or caused, the decline in performance.

In the latter months of financial year 2024-25 there was an improvement in collection rates. This seems to have been because of changes made in response to demands made by Scrutiny this time last year. Let’s hope it continues.

As to who is responsible for this, since 2020 Newham has had three chief execs but only one mayor.