Revealed: £10m in unpaid Wolverhampton City Council tax bills

According to new figures, 24,000 council tax accounts were not paid in full in the last financial year, leaving the authority with a hole of more than £4m.

And overall, the council is chasing a total of £10,160,079.

Wolverhampton's finance boss, Councillor Andrew Johnson, said the authority was committed to cracking down on non-payment.

"The figure for all years goes back a long, long way," he said. "And if we look back what we've got uncollected in 2011/12 is less than 0.1 per cent. For 2012/13 we have got 1.2pc left to collect and 12/14, 2.2pc.

"We go on and on collecting year on year. The in-year collection rate is fairly typical and slightly better than most of the metropolitan authorities and, with the levels of deprivation Wolverhampton has, it is what you would expect.

"There is no way with that £10m outstanding is going to be just left, we will get the vast majority of that over time.

"It is a matter of when people can't for one reason or another pay or won't pay, you have to use sensible collection methods to try and get the money - it is public money. We try to do it in the most compassionate way, but ultimately if there is someone who is refusing to pay, there are legal sanctions we can take."

In November, the council launched sanctions that see fines of £70 given to people who fail to fill in council tax forms. This was brought in to cut down on the thousands who try to dodge their bills every year.

Continued failure to provide information leads to a further fine of £280 if the requested details are not handed over.

The new data has come from a Freedom of Information request.

But the FOI showed that, since 2014, the council has yet to impose any penalties on unpaid council tax.

Councillor Johnson said this was because the data was yet to be collected.

He said: "The first canvass since the change in policy starts this month so we haven't done it yet. That policy was changed in November and it will be enforced."

Last year the city council called in bailiffs 5,087 times to chase unpaid council tax.