Is Kirklees one of the worst or one of the best local authorities at collecting council tax?
While it seems like it should be a simple fact, the reality is less than clear.
While no councils collect 100% of the money owed to them, the most recent government statistics rank Kirklees as one of the worst in the country – coming in at 283rd out of 326 councils with more than £7m owing.
But this has been disputed by council finance chiefs who say their own figures make them third best out of the largest ten local authorities.
Statistics from the Department for Communities and Local Government show Kirklees collected 95.6% of the money owed to it in 2015/16 – up from 95.2% the year before.
But Kirklees says its figure is 98% – third best of the big ten councils.
At a Question Time event at Huddersfield Town Hall last week, Aleks Lukic, UKIP branch chairman for Dewsbury, Batley and Spen questioned why Kirklees was performing worse than most.
At the meeting, Leader of Kirklees Council, Clr David Sheard, said he “didn’t recognise” Mr Lukic’s figures.
Mr Lukic said he was in disbelief as his figures were official government statistics.
A spokesperson for the council has now explained their view.
They said the official figures were misleading as they showed a “snap shot” in time.
The 2.4% difference between Kirklees’ figure and the government figure was due to the time lag in collecting cash from some groups.
“It is difficult to compare collection rates between councils because there are a number of local factors that can impact upon annual collection rates,” the spokesperson said.
“In addition, the information shows a snap shot in time.
“Performance in relation to collection of council tax and business rates is measured over time. In this regard, our performance is 98% for council tax.
“We compare our performance against other metropolitan areas and on this measure, Kirklees performed slightly above average year on year.
“The average for metropolitan authorities in 15/16 was 95.4% compared to 95.6% in Kirklees.
“Based on the ten largest local authorities, Kirklees is third highest for in year collection.”
Earlier this year the Examiner revealed many of Kirklees own councillors had failed to pay their bills on time.
After months of investigation it emerged that 13 councillors had an issue with late payment and six had been issued court summons by their own employer. It was revealed that former Mayor of Kirklees, Clr Jean Calvert, had been issued warnings for more than five years in a row – eight reminder letters and five court summonses.
