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Haringey Council - beacon of well run public body shining best practice into the world

vergaverga
in Local discussion
Thought it might be fun to have a little rant at Haringey So I am going to start with this audit recommendation that they have 33 million pounds of debt that they can't collect - sound like a lot of money anyone? "The Council continues to provide 100% for debt over 2 years old. There remains over £33m of debt that is over 2 years old which the Council is still pursuing, but is still not being collected. If these debtors genuinely will not be collected the Council need to consider writing these balances off"
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Comments

  • HolbornFoxHolbornFox
    Comes off the tax bill though i would have thought, that's why debts are bought, sold and traded as futures.
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  • vergaverga
    No, that is debt factoring or invoice discounting where you either borrow against or sell your debts to someone else, for a fee. The 33m here is money they can't collect for example arrears on council tax. It works out at 123 pounds for each Haringey resident.
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  • gardener-joegardener-joe
    edited December 2017
    ...
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  • vergaverga
    If I were a local councillor in (hearsay) one of the worst run Councils in London, I would just want to pass go, take my money and rejoice in the fact that the Council has been one party control since longer than the Communist party has had one party control of China and there is a fat chance of anyone getting elected in my place. Must be great having no opposition.
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  • vergaverga
    I mean, 33 million pounds! 33,000,000 pounds - I can't work the pound key
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  • trainspottertrainspotter
    I find the generalised assertions about Haringey Council being so terrible a bit unhelpful. They have always been professional and courteous whenever I've dealt with them and I have had quite a few dealings lately with a number of different departments. They do seem skint though and it's noticeable that Islington has much better provision of eg children's services. Perhaps improved debt collection would help, but they don't appear in this list of worst performing councils on that score: http://home.bt.com/lifestyle/money/mortgages-bills/councils-havent-collected-27-billion-of-council-tax-11363992736902
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  • HolbornFoxHolbornFox
    Couldn't be bothered to keep going on but if you think that local authorities are not using clever accounting with that debt then i'll have some of what you are taking please. One example would be looking into the fact that the bailiff companies they use give them kick backs from the 'reasonable' charges, meaning they profit further from harassing people who fall into council tax arrears, the goal of the bailiff firm is to keep poor people in a revolving circle of debt. I wonder how much money they have made that way (and with parking tickets) vs how much 'debt' they cannot collect, obviously enough to hire the police to stop and cajole people in the street. Writing outstanding debts off has nothing to do with buying debts or factoring, it would not suit the council to sell the debts anyway.
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  • AliAli
    Well the "Customer Service" experience I have just had is utterly crap. I get a letter reminding me to renew our residents parking permit. Full of nasty threats about what might happen if I don't renew on time. They are obviously trying to drive people to a lower cost to serve so the letter asks you go to a web site. But that doesn't work ( I get an error message saying the "This permit is not currently at a stage that can be renewed online. Please contact us by email at permits-vouchers@haringey.gov.uk if you feel this is incorrect.") So off goes the e-mail Again a nasty the threat of dire consequences if you don't renew in the receipt e-mail and no promise of hitting a service level of 5 days response so your left hanging with the threats. I week later nothing back try to chase the e-mail again the nasty read receipt. So try the phone on the main number to be given about 5 mins of irrelevant messages eventually get to the parking permits line. Guess what they cut the line because they are too busy! Who every has design this process flow has got lots of it wrong, the customer data fields on the web site have different names/labels to what is in the letter. They may think they are trying to be more efficient but is just one great big cost of failure. So hopefully will get this sorted without visiting their customer centre in Wood Green.
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