In a world of spin, here's genuine unspun success. For the first time since its creation in 1996, the in-year Council Tax collection figure of Dundee City Council has risen above 90%. OK, so here's the Council's press release :-"Continued improvement in council tax collection"
"Dundee City Council Convener of Finance, Councillor Fraser Macpherson has welcomed new figures that show a continued and sustained improvement in the amount of council tax collected by the end of the financial year in which it was due.
"The in-year collection figure for 2005/06 has reached 90.7% which is an increase of 3.6% over the previous financial year 2004/05.
"Councillor Macpherson said: "This is the fourth year running that we have improved our in-year council tax collection figure and we have firmly established a positive trend. I am particularly pleased that we have reached our target in year collection figure of 90% two years earlier that planned.
"This is largely due to the hard work of the finance revenues staff who have introduced and implemented a new recovery process which has been fully operational since February this year.
"As a result of the new system we have increased payment arrangements of £1.6 million from 7,272 debtor accounts to £6.7 million from 19,450 accounts.
"We have also increased the numbers and value of monthly payments made by direct debit to a level where they are now accounting for almost half of the council tax income. This helps with our cash flow and the amount of interest we can generate.
"Although our in-year and overall collection rates continue to improve, there is still a lot to be done and I can assure the Dundee public that we will continue to pursue all outstanding council tax debt from previous years."
OK, we as LibDems want to move from Council Tax to local income tax, but as things stand its presently a matter of managing Council Tax. The reality - Dundee is still below the Scottish average but Dundee has far greater issues of poverty and deprivation than the average Scottish authority. It is a genuinely significant success of the City Council - and the LibDem/Labour administration - that we have had year on year improvement and a 3.6% increase in in-year collection last year in particular. The Courier covered this today and actually agreed with the editorial! Also interviewed also on Wave 102 on the issue.
Rest of day - enjoyable meeting with the Leader of the Council on a number of issues, Beacon Management meeting with the Police & others re the City Centre and a good few local issues including black bags on Magdalen Green, wonky signage, and a Social Work issue.