'Crazy': Dudley Labour leader criticises council tax collection lag
Problems with Dudley’s council tax collection were described as "crazy" by the authority’s opposition leader after it was heard that targets had been missed.
A meeting of the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee was given details of problems with computer systems used to collect the tax, which resulted in data usually uploaded automatically having to be input manually.
By the end of June the council had collected 24 percent of the year’s council tax which was below the target of up to 27.4 percent.
At the meeting, on Wednesday (September 17), Councillor Adam Aston said: “What this council needs is money and it is disappointing that council tax collection fell below target.
“In terms of some of the system issues there is a reference to some processes that were previously automated and are now manual.
“That seems crazy in 2025 that issues that used to be done automatically are having to be put into the system manually – that must eat up a lot of staff time.”
A report for the committee signed by Balvinder Heran, the council’s chief executive, said: “The shortfall is attributed to a 4.99 percent increase in council tax, a rise in Council Tax Reduction (CTR) to 60 percent, and delays in processing direct debits.
“The service is facing operational challenges, including insufficient recovery team capacity, system downtime, and manual processing due to cloud migration, have further impacted performance.”
The council’s interim chief finance officer, List Kitto, told Councillor Aston: “It does seem perverse that we’ve lost some automation, some was expected.
“Some of it was unplanned and we have bought the system developer in, they are working with us to address the issues.
“I would expect that automation to be back in place in the next few weeks.”
Ms Kitto also told councillors more staff were being recruited to process and collect council tax and part-time staff are doing extra hours to catch up.
She added: “The collection rate at the end of June was lower than we were planning.
“This position is recoverable in later months but we cannot be complacent.”
