Cabinet members at Stafford Borough Council have agreed to write off a business rate debt of more than £14,000 after it was deemed irrecoverable.

There has been a "pleasing start" to the collection of business rates for the current financial year however, with 30.3% collected by the end of June – up from 28.9% during the same period last year – Thursday's cabinet meeting was told.

Cllr Ralph Cooke, cabinet member for resources, said on Thursday (17 September) that there had been a slight decrease in the level of council tax for 2026/7 collected by the end of June – 28.5%, compared to the 28.6% by the end of June 2025.

But housing benefit overpayments worth more than £97,000 had been recovered by the authority during the first quarter of the current financial year.

A report to the cabinet said: "The team also increased its efforts to collect older council tax debts due to the council and this may impact some residents' ability to pay current charges.

In the first three months of this financial year, prior year arrears have reduced by £662K, which will have affected some residents' ability to pay the current bill on time.

"Changes to the way that business rates are calculated this year mean that many retail, hospitality and leisure establishments faced increased bills, as the former 40% rate relief was removed.

"Our collection efforts are sometimes frustrated by weaknesses in legislation.

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"Rates are due from the occupiers rather than the owners of property and where the occupier is a company, we can only recover from that company.

Some proprietors will strip a company of its assets or dissolve the company before we have had an opportunity to implement our recovery procedures; a new company is then formed in a similar style, to trade from the same premises.

"Central Government has previously undertaken to review the loopholes that exist in rating and company legislation, though no changes have yet been received.

"Officers continue to actively monitor these issues."