Of all the council tax debt a council could have collected — old unpaid bills plus this year's billing — this is the share it formally gave up on and wiped off the books. It shows how readily a council abandons money it's owed. A high rate means a lot of debt is written off rather than chased; a very low rate usually means debts are pursued, though it can also just mean the books haven't been tidied.
| name | writeoff_rate |
|---|---|
| dataset | 03-council-tax-collection |
| kind | constructed |
| type | numeric |
| unit | ratio |
| grain | billing authority |
| role | feature |
| source | formula: (write-offs lines 18 + 19 + 22, Table_9a cols 22, 23, 28) / (ct_arrears_bfwd + ct_collectable_debit) (Table_9a cols 17, 5) |
| period | 2024-25 financial year |
| missingness | unknown |
| score_note | Propensity to abandon debt is a distinct behaviour signal, but prudent write-off muddies interpretation. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
In-year write-offs as a share of the total debt base (opening arrears plus new billing). It measures the propensity to give up on debt rather than collect it. Some write-off is prudent housekeeping of genuinely uncollectable debt, so extreme low values are not automatically good; note line 18's header text is truncated in the file though the column is present.