SOUTHEND Council has written off a whopping £2million in unpaid debts in the last year, it has been revealed.

Reports put together for the ruling Tory cabinet on the authority’s current financial standing revealed it wrote off £1,995,501 of debt.

These included £328,786 of unpaid council tax, £627,768 of unpaid business rates, £ 93,469 in unpaid adult services, £230,143 in unpaid parking tickets, £21,640 in unpaid library fines, £135,468 in unpaid rents, and £486,808 in unrecovered housing benefit overpayments.

Harry Davis, campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “When councils should be tightening their belts, they really cannot afford not to collect huge amounts of money they are owed.

“Of course there will be those who struggle to make ends meet, but councils have to differentiate between taxpayers who can’t afford to pay their bills and those who refuse.

“Southend Council must learn the lesson from their mistakes because it’s not fair on ordinary, law-abiding taxpayers for others to get away without paying their share.”

Corporate cabinet member Andrew Moring said: “Councils are multi-million pound business that work across a variety of services. As with any major business, ‘bad debt provision’ is budgeted for to ensure that there are no financial implications that affect local people.

“Council officers work hard to ensure that any debt written off is kept as low as possible and will chase council tax payments for example for as long as it is economically viable to do so. With bankruptcy sometimes this process is taken out of our hands.”

Dennis Knight, 69, of Southchurch Avenue, Southend, used to run a housing benefit section and he wasn’t impressed either.

He said: “To write off £2million rankles. Particularly as there are a lot of causes like the children’s centres, social services, and adult care which are having to make cutbacks and where the money could go a lot further.

“I was under the impression the council was going to do what a lot of London boroughs are doing, which is to clamp vehicles for non-payment of parking fines, so I hope that would recover at least some of the cost.”

However, the report which will be presented to the cabinet warned: “It is possible that unforeseen and unplanned additional write offs occur, which lead to the value of debts written off in any year exceeding the bad debt provision.”