Having written off £1.6m of uncollected Council Tax debts last year, a trades union magazine reports this week that Nottingham City Council tops a list of 40 East Midlands local authorities for uncollected Council Tax for 2007/2008.

The authority managed not to collect almost £5.5m last year, out of a total for all 40 authorities surveyed of £40.6m. The total uncollected by all 354 local authorities in England was £601m.

That’s £601m not available for public services across the country and £5.5m not being spent on local people in Nottingham. Coming hard on the heels of the Icelandic investment debacle and the re-engagement of recently sacked senior City Council staff as consultants, one now has to ask if any of our public funds are safe in the hands of the City Council… or, in the case of the Council Tax, not in the hands of the City Council.

Judging by the recent pay out to Tim Render, a former senior finance officer with Nottingham City Council, they pay the men that look after the money an awful lot to do so. Perhaps they could save us all some cash and improve services in the city at the same time if they took a little more time to find a few people who could actually do the job properly and didn’t cost us the earth.