BY far the biggest reason for writing off council tax debt in the Borders last year was as a result of the account holder’s death, senior councillors have been informed.

In the financial year 2023/24, the local authority was forced to write-off £409,441 in unpaid amounts of the levy.

Members of the council’s decision-making Executive Committee were informed on Tuesday (June 11) that £155,450 of that amount was categorised as the result of the debtor being ‘deceased’.

This applied to 610 council tax account holders in the last financial year.

In total, the council was forced to write-off debts amounting to a total of £657,000 over the period.

The corporate debts deemed ‘unrecoverable’ also included non-domestic rates, sundry debtors, housing benefit overpayments and aged debt from the balance sheet in 2023/24.

Galashiels councillor Fay Sinclair said: “It is worth noting that by far the biggest council tax write-off is where the account holder is deceased, but it is not automatic that you don’t look for payment it is just where there is literally nothing in the estate to pay it.

“So we are talking about not pursuing grieving relatives for money that they don’t have and that wasn’t their debt in the first place.”

Members were told that written-off debt can be ‘written on’ and pursued again if new information comes to light. There is a five-year time limit for debt recovery in such cases.

The latest overall debt figure is fractionally less than the £662k forced to be written-off in 2022/23.

In all cases, a debt will only be written off when it is uneconomic to pursue, the debtor becomes insolvent and when all options of recovery have been exhausted.