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Posted By: Mark Council to be asked to write off £130,000 - 5th Nov 2014 9:39am
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Wirral council chiefs are to be asked to write off more than £130,000 of debts.

The cash is part of millions of pounds of the so-called “toxic debt” problem first revealed by the ECHO.

Last year, an external report commissioned by the ruling Labour group in a bid to “clean up the council” said former senior officers knew of the problem but failed to act or tell councillors.

In total, it was found there were debts totalling £24.7m, of which only £14.8m is thought to be collectible, primarily focused on the Department of Adult Social Services (DASS) and dating back many years.

Since then, a team has been working on “cleansing of all long outstanding DASS debt” identified in the independent report.

The problem was discovered in 2012 when council officers trying to tackle the authority’s budget deficit discovered the bad debts had been effectively treated as assets.

The independent report said: “Over the years, the chief officers in DASS, legal department and the finance department were aware of the growing problem on aged debt.”

But it blamed “a corporate failure to understand the scale and consequence of this issue”.

When the authority’s ruling cabinet meets this week council bosses will be told the total debts processed so far amount to £6,595,007 and that £2,812,410 has so far been written off.

Councillors will be asked to approve plans to write off a further £130,137.36 of “outstanding client contributions”.

The report said: “The Collection and Recovery Team has already endeavoured to recover the outstanding client contrib-ution debts without success.


Source : Click Me
Posted By: Mark Re: Council to be asked to write off £130,000 - 5th Nov 2014 9:40am
I wish they would ask me first what to do.
Who's accountable for the mistakes ?
Posted By: Greenwood Re: Council to be asked to write off £130,000 - 5th Nov 2014 12:00pm
Whoever is/was accountable, they will probably have weaselled their way out of it. How on earth can you treat a bad debt as an asset?!* Does 'a corporate failure' mean people will not be named and shamed? That's a good few salaries being written off there. And now the council is cutting left, right and centre... it's tragic.
Posted By: venice Re: Council to be asked to write off £130,000 - 5th Nov 2014 1:53pm
"The problem was discovered in 2012 when council officers trying to tackle the authority’s budget deficit discovered the bad debts had been effectively treated as assets."

Good God, even I know the difference between debts and assets , and I got a miserable GCE grade in maths! What an absolute disgrace this has been allowed to carry on.
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