Aberdeenshire Council eyes bailiff tax contract

Councillors will meet this week to discuss the six year debt collection contract.

The council’s finance team has asked members to authorise a new £1.2million, six-year contract to recover unpaid council tax, business rates, housing benefit over-payments and a host of other sundry debts.

Last night the authority’s co-leader Richard Thomson said: “Councils, just like any business, need to have a means of managing and in the last resort recovering outstanding debts.

“Aberdeenshire has a good record of collecting outstanding bills and council tax revenues, and we want to continue to ensure this remains the case while ensuring that appropriate support is available to those individuals who find themselves in hardship and genuinely unable to pay.”

But the initiative has met with criticism from campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance who have described the plans as a “very expensive plaster” to address a wider problem.

Aberdeenshire Council’s policy and resources committee will vote on Thursday on whether to authorise a new contract.