Millions in unpaid taxes owed to Kirklees Council has had to be written off.

At a meeting on Friday, councillors will hear £5.8m of ‘bad debt’ is unrecoverable this year.

About £4.9m of the total is unpaid council tax (£2.5m), council rents (£1m) and business rates (£1.4m).

A further £900,000 is debts owed to a wide range of other council departments.

The £5.8m total – about 1.4% of all Kirklees’ debt – is a reduction in the sums written off in previous years – £6.8m in 2015/16 (1.7%), and £8.9m (2.2%) the year before that.

As the seventh largest council in the country, Kirklees has more than 183,000 properties liable for council tax, raising £178m and more than 15,000 properties for business rates worth £106m.

Town Hall. About £3.2m is categorised as “not viable to pursue” with a further £1m lost due to being unable to trace the people

The council says it normally only writes off debts if it thinks it will cost more to recover the money than the value of the debt.

A report into the bad debt shows the council has collected 96% of all council tax owed in 2016/17, up from 95.6% the year before.

Last year the Examiner revealed some of the council’s own councillors were guilty of not paying their council tax and had been summoned to court.

The report shows some £253,000 of the £5.8m is due to people who have died.

More than £1m is from business liquidation or people being made bankrupt.

About £3.2m is categorised as “not viable to pursue” with a further £1m lost due to being unable to trace the people.

Kirklees Council’s service director for finance, Debbie Hogg, said: “The figures for council tax and business rates demonstrate how important it is for everyone to pay their share of council tax and business rates to help fund essential council services.

“Arrears overall are falling and collection is rising year on year.

“As an example, the arrears for Council Tax have fallen by 25.8% since 2014/15.”

A Kirklees Council spokesperson said: “The council aims to maximise its collection and recovery of all council tax and business rates debts before asking for debt to be written off.

“The recovery process ensures that all accounts in arrears are chased through reminders, summonses, obtaining liability orders through Magistrates Court to allow use of bailiffs, attachment to earnings or benefits, issuing committal proceedings, instigating insolvency proceedings, or putting charging orders on properties.

“The council only writes off arrears where it appears it would not be cost effective to collect or the debtor has absconded.

“Equally, if circumstances change, previously written off debts can be pursued again.”

The council’s Corporate Governance and Audit Committee will meet to discuss the report on Friday.