The Scottish Government

Next »

Listen

A Scottish Executive Statistics Publication
17 ^th June 2005

ISBN 0 7559 2600 5 (Web only publication)

This document is also available in pdf format (96k)

This statistical publication notice provides results on the collection of Council Tax ( CT) by Scottish Local Authorities for 2004-05 and previous years. The key points are:

• In 2004-05, for Scotland as a whole, the total amount of Council Tax billed (excluding Council Tax Benefit) was £1.671 billion. Of this total, £1.549 billion was collected by 31 March 2005.
• This represents a provisional Scotland total in-year CT collection rate for 2004-05 of 92.7%, a 1.0 percentage point increase from the previous year (see table 2).
• Overall, since 1993-94, the total amount of Council Tax billed in Scotland was £14.868 billion, of which £14.107 billion, or 94.9%, was collected by 31 March 2005.
• Provisional in-year CT collection rates for 2004-05 range from a low of 85.6% in Glasgow, to a high of 97.3% in Orkney.
• These provisional figures suggest that 29 out of 32 councils have improved their in-year CT collection rate in 2004-05. Only Orkney (-0.5 percentage points), South Ayrshire (-0.2 percentage points) and Stirling (no change) have not improved upon the 2003-04 figures published by Audit Scotland.

The in-year Council Tax collection rate is a Statutory Performance Indicator. The figures for 2004-05 in this Statistics Publication Notice are provisional, pre-audit estimates. Audited figures will be published by Audit Scotland in due course.

TABLES

Table 1: Summary of reported amounts of Council Tax billed and received: Scotland

Table 2: Summary of in-year Council Tax percentage received, by year to which the bill refers: Scotland and Local Authority

Table 3: Summary of reported total council tax percentage received by 31 March 2005, by year to which the bill refers: Local Authorities

Table 4: Council Tax billed and received where year to which the bill refers was prior to the introduction of the unitary authorities in April 1996: Local Authorities (excluding Dumfries and Galloway)

Table 5: Council Tax billed and received where year to which the bill refers was after the introduction of the unitary authorities in April 1996

BACKGROUND NOTES

1. DATA SOURCES

1.1 The Scottish Executive's Council Tax, Non-Domestic Rates and Community Charge Receipts Return ( CTRR) collects data from Local Authorities on the total amounts of Council Tax billed and the total amounts collected for all years from 1993-94 to date, and is the source of all the data in Tables 1 to 5, with the exception of the in-year collection rates in Table 2 for 1998-99 to 2003-04. The CTRR data is collected after the end of the financial year, but before audit and is therefore provisional.

1.2 The in-year collection rates in Table 2 for 1998-99 to 2003-04 are the published Statutory Performance Indicators produced by Audit Scotland. The 2004-05 in-year collection rates should be treated as provisional figures, with final audited figures for 2004-05 to be published by Audit Scotland.

2. DATA DEFINITIONS

2.1 All data are based on the actual amounts received from taxpayers, and are net of all discounts (e.g. 25% single person discount) and exemptions. Surcharges are also excluded where possible, although some councils cannot do this (see footnotes in Tables for details.)

2.2 The figures exclude Council Tax Benefit, are before any amounts written off for bad or doubtful debt, and reflect any correction to liabilities made after billing.

2.3 Figures from 1993-94 to 1995-96 include the amounts billed and collected for Council Water Charges.

3. ENQUIRIES

3.1 Public enquiries (non-media) about the information contained in this Statistical Publication Notice should be addressed to Statistical Support for Local Government Branch, Scottish Executive, Analytical Services Division, Area 2-J South, Victoria Quay, Edinburgh, EH6 6QQ (telephone 0131 244 7033 or e-mail lgfstats@scotland.gsi.gov.uk ).

3.2 Media enquiries about the information in this Statistics Publication Notice should be addressed to David Hamilton on 0131-244-2056.

Internet: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00428

Local Government Finance Statistics Web-site: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/lgfstats

Next »