This is the total council tax still owed to a council at the end of the year, after everything collected or formally given up on — the overall pile of unpaid bills built up over the years. It's the clearest single sign of long-running collection problems. A small pile means bills largely get paid eventually; a large one means unpaid debt has been allowed to build up.
| name | ct_arrears_stock |
|---|---|
| dataset | 03-council-tax-collection |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | £000 |
| grain | billing authority |
| role | feature |
| source | data/Table_9_QRC4_2024-25.ods / sheet Table_9a / col 30 "24. Total Arrears outstanding as at 31 March 2025" |
| period | as at 31 March 2025 |
| missingness | unknown |
| score_note | Key published stock figure, but absolute £000 needs normalising before it says anything about management. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
The closing total of council tax arrears outstanding — the accumulated uncollected pile after the year's receipts and write-offs. It is the key stock measure of long-run collection failure, and feeds arrears_intensity, arrears_growth and arrears_per_capita. Absolute values scale with council size, so normalise before comparing.