GLASGOW council bosses have been forced to call in debt collectors eight times in a bid to claw back unpaid council tax from city councillors.
The local authority hasn’t revealed details of whose arrears sanctioned a visit from the warrant officers. They would only say that since the local elections in 2017 there have been “eight separate occasions whereby a Councillor’s Council Tax arrears had been forwarded to the Council’s Debt Management partners for collection.”
The information was released to the National through Freedom of Information legislation.
We can also reveal that there were nine councillors in the city who ended up in arrears last year. All have now paid their dues.
That means today, for the first time since the 2017 elections, all of the city’s councillors can take part in the budget vote.
Previously, a number of councillors have been forced to avoid taking part in the debate as under Section 112 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 elected members cannot vote on a budget if they are two or more months in arrears.
When she was first elected in 2017, Labour’s Cecilia O’Lone owed a whopping £17,520.80. Last year she took this down to £7,355.91. Yesterday the the councillor for the Calton said she had since settled up her bill entirely.
Last year Conservative councillor Ade Aibinu owed £510.46. He told us it was due to a “personal error” that led to him being “temporarily unable to access my council tax account online”.
Labour’s Bill Butler owed £613.80 bill. He said he was now in the process of setting up a direct debit to pay his bill. His party colleague Gary Gray owed £658. SNP councillor Elspeth Kerr was the biggest debtor in her party group, owing £7,128. Colleagues Elaine McSporran paid off a £2353 debt, while Anne McTaggart settled her £1459 debt.
Michelle Ferns paid up £320, and Alexander Belic cleared his bill for £229.
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A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: “Council Tax supports a wide range of vital front-line services. It is important that everyone that can pay does pay.”
The National asked all 32 of Scotland’s local authorities to release details of councillors in debt.
While most said they had no elected members due cash, a number refused to release the information.
In Edinburgh three elected members have accrued Council Tax arrears which have “passed to the warrant stage of the Council Tax recovery procedure.”
In Aberdeenshire, four councillors fell into arrears last year, though only the SNP councillor Victoria Harper was in arrears at the start of 2020.
Both Fife and South Ayrshire council disclosed that they had one councillor with arrears but both authorities refused to release names.
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