A South London council is reportedly owed more than £2.6 million in debt due to unpaid parking charges.
Bexley Council has revealed it is facing £73million in unpaid debt, with more than £2.6m of that sum from parking charges over the past two years.
The figure comes from an agenda report for a general purposes and audit committee meeting for Bexley Council on September 28.
Council documents said the debt from parking charges had recently grown due to the increased number of fines being issued as well as a backlog of appeals.
Officers cited low resources as the reason for the delay in payments being received, as well as an IT error which stopped cases progressing to enforcement agents.
The difficulty in receiving payments reportedly led to the turnaround time of appeals to fines becoming approximately 50 days.
The report said that 29,095 parking charges had been issued between April and July this year, with fifteen per cent of the fines in this period remaining unpaid by the end of July.
It added that 76,465 parking fines were issued in the 2022/23 financial year overall, and that over £650,000 of parking debt had already been written off in the current financial year.
The majority of the council’s overall debt it was owed was attributed to council tax, with £40.5m being cited as debt outstanding and over half of this sum being over two years old.
Recent increases to the debt in the past year were attributed to increased council tax charges equating to a higher value for arrears.
Council officers said in their report: “The council charges for the provision of a number of services and also collects income for parking, commercial rent, temporary accommodation rents, council tax, business rates and housing benefit overpayments.
“The council undertakes recovery action where debts are not paid following legislative guidance and this will vary depending on the type of debt and in some cases individual circumstances of the debtor.”
Other sources of the council’s sum of owed debt included overpayments of housing benefits. The council was cited as being owed £7.5m due to overpayments from the past two years, which was reportedly due to claimants not telling the authority about changes in their personal circumstances quickly enough.
Bexley Council’s debt recovery board meets monthly to find methods to improve debt recovery and reduce the level of write-offs.
Work had also been done to arrange payments from bodies owing money to the council, including the NHS and Greater London Authority.
