More than £30m of council tax has gone uncollected in the borough since 2018, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter

Newham Town Hall and (inset) Paul Martin — Newham Town Hall and (inset) interim chief exec Paul Martin

Almost £31million of council tax has gone uncollected in Newham since 2018, town hall chiefs have revealed.

A report presented to councillors says Newham Council has consistently had one of the worst tax collection rates in London.

The revelation comes as the town hall is considering raising council tax by almost 9% next year, along with deep spending cuts.

The council’s interim chief executive Paul Martin addressed an overview and scrutiny committee meeting on Tuesday (18th) and admitted the authority took its “eye off the ball” when collecting tax after the pandemic.

A total of £30,840,577 of council tax owed by residents between 2018 and 2024 remains unpaid, according to figures presented to councillors on the committee.

Councillors were told that the council’s collection rate was the lowest of all London boroughs in the 2024/25 financial year, at 89.9%. This compares to the London average of 94.9%.

The council also had the second-lowest collection rate in London for each of the four financial years prior to that, running from April 2020 to March 2024.

Martin said that most council tax collection rates fell during the pandemic, but that Newham had lacked “rigour” in its efforts to recover.

He said: “Covid disrupted all kinds of things in numerous ways. Every council is impacted by that, Newham is no different to any other council.

“It is clear that in our recovery immediately after Covid it looks to me from the data here that we took our eye off the ball.”

The revelation comes as the council is trying to find £53m to set a balanced budget next year.

Options being considered include asking the government for permission to raise council tax by 8.99%, reducing weekly waste collections, and closing or merging youth zones and childrens’ centres.

Labour councillor Carleene Lee-Phakoe said: “Council tax is used to provide services – services that our residents need, services that our residents want and for some residents that they rely on.

“The reality is we don’t have enough money to pay for services.”

Council officers said a drive to improve council tax collection – with letters and texts to residents who owed payments – had led to a “significant improvement”.

They said they were on course to collect 94% of council tax by March, which is close to pre-pandemic levels. Their report to the committee said they had “collected significantly more income this year, compared to the same point last year”.

However, the report also said this had led the council’s call centre to receive “significantly higher call volumes” and that its call-answering rates were “still some way off where they should be”.

Mehmood Mirza, of the Newham Independents group, said residents who had received a demand for payment felt “frustration” when trying to get through.

Cllr Mirza said: “They have to come to their councillor – they can’t get through on the telephone, the emails aren’t replying.”

Labour’s Susan Masters said some councillors had been helping “residents who were told they had arrears wrongly”. She asked why the council didn’t anticipate that its collection drive would increase pressure on its contact centre.

Officers said they had assigned extra staff to their call-handling team, but that the demand was “unprecedented”.

Dave Gibbs, head of revenues and transactional finance said: “We recognised towards the end of February our collection rate wasn’t great and we had to do something about it. We had to get the notices out to get the income in.

“We did try and put as much additional resource as we possibly could. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough.”

Gibbs said that the volume of calls had since fallen and that residents should now find it easier to get through.

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