DEATH is the major reason for council tax being written off in the Borders, senior councillors were informed this week.

Scottish Borders Council (SBC) wrote off bad debts deemed unrecoverable of just over £180k during the period from April to September this year, a new report reveals.

The debts cover the areas of council tax, non-domestic rates, sundry debtors, housing benefit overpayments and aged debt from the balance sheet.

At a meeting of the council’s decision-making Executive Committee, Selkirkshire councillor Leagh Douglas, SBC portfolio member for finance, it and corporate performance, said “rigorous” measures were taken before any of the debts are written-off.

Galashiels councillor Fay Sinclair sought to clarify the reasons for the write-offs.

On Tuesday (November 12) she said: “This is always a difficult one I think for the public to take on-board, particularly when we have just recently been talking about putting up council tax, to see reports saying we are going to write-off people’s council tax debt. The public really don’t like that.

“So it is really important to highlight that yet again, the same as in previous years, that the highest number of council tax debt that is written-off is because people have died.

“What we are saying is that we cannot recover that from their estate and we are not going to be chasing grieving relatives for the money, I think that’s a really important point.”

A report to SBC’s Executive Committee stated: “We seek to minimise the cost of write-offs for each council department by ensuring that all debts are subject to full recovery and legal processes as outlined in the debt recovery policy.

“When all means of recovery have been exhausted, two reminder letters at five days and 19 days after due date, and if there is no contact, payment or repayment agreement it is progressed to decree for enforcement action.

“There will be circumstances when it will be appropriate to write debts off as irrecoverable.

“It is recognised that where a debt is irrecoverable, prompt and regular write-off of such debts is good accounting practice.”