A SENIOR councillor is calling for more powers to help authorities claim unpaid business rates after £153,000 debt was written off in Wyre Forest.

Labour group leader Nigel Knowles said companies in financial strife were exploiting a loophole allowing them to get out of paying money owed and urged Wyre Forest District Council to lobby Whitehall.

But he accused the Tory administration in the district of being uninterested in doing so, while Wyre Forest Labour spokesman Stephen Brown slammed a “political” tweet from the council’s official Twitter feed during a cabinet meeting last month which described the £153,000 sum as a “small” percentage of the £30million total it collects.

Finance chief Councillor Nathan Desmond dismissed their claims and added strenuous efforts were made to collect all business rates.

Councillor Knowles said: “There is a serious loophole which needs to be closed by Government to stop allowing companies to “write off” business rate debt.

“This year in Wyre Forest, companies have been dissolved or business owners have absconded leaving their debts to be picked up and written off by local council tax payers.

“The total for Wyre Forest is over £153,000. The Government should legislate to stop this loophole being abused.

“The local Conservatives seem uninterested in asking their Government to legislate, and seem content to allow companies to get away with leaving their unpaid debts on our doorstep, letting council tax payers cover the loss.”

Wyre Forest District Council said the £30m went into a business rates pool and is shared amongst other authorities and services.

But Mr Brown said the council still gets around £3m and any uncollected debt would be a significant loss to Wyre Forest.

He said: “It seemed a highly inappropriate tweet, pretty cavalier, and not to mention quite politically motivated on an official council feed.

“It demonstrated an underlying poor attitude towards public finances and the importance of keeping finances in good order, let alone remaining politically neutral.

Councillor Desmond said: “Councillor Knowles and Stephen Brown do not seem to understand how the business rates system works.

“The Cabinet report summarised the exhaustive efforts that the council’s staff made to seek to recover the debts and it is only when all avenues have been exhausted that debts reluctantly have to be written off.

“We are rigorous in what we do as can easily be seen by the number of times and considerable periods over which debts have been pursued.

“Companies that have gone bust don’t have magic money trees to pay their business rates or their other debts. I explained in the Cabinet meeting that the £153,000 is a small proportion of the £30m the council collects each year and the tweet accurately summarised what I said.

“The write offs are borne by the business rates pool as a whole, not by Wyre Forest District Council on its own.”