This is the amount of council tax debt a council formally gave up on this year — bills it decided will never be paid and wiped off the books. Some of this is sensible housekeeping (people move away, businesses fold), but a lot of it means the council is abandoning money it was owed. High write-offs relative to the debt owed suggest giving up rather than chasing; very low ones can mean healthy collection or just books that haven't been tidied.
| name | ct_writeoffs |
|---|---|
| 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 / cols 22-23 & 28 (lines 18, 19, 22 — write-offs of earlier years, of 2023-24, and of 2024-25 debt; line 18's header text is truncated in the file but the column is present) |
| period | 2024-25 financial year |
| missingness | unknown |
| score_note | Raw write-off pounds only signal once ratioed; truncated header adds extraction friction. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Council tax debt formally written off (abandoned) during the year, split across earlier-years, 2023-24 and 2024-25 debt. High write-offs relative to the debt base indicate a propensity to give up on collection rather than pursue it, though some write-off is legitimate (uncollectable debt). Note that line 18's header text is truncated in the file, but the column is present.