A LEADING councillor says City of York Council will "do its damndest" to ensure this week's tax reminder fiasco never happens again.

Coun Quentin Macdonald told of the difficulties that had led to 700 letters mistakenly going out to householders, telling them they were behind with their council tax payments, when they had actually paid up in full.

He also spoke with pride at the authority's low administrative costs when it came to the collection of council tax, which he said were the sixthth lowest out of 352 tax-collecting local authorities in the country.

His comments came as the council's head of public services, James Drury, issued this open letter of apology (right) to customers.

Coun McDonald, executive member for resources, said: "We are absolutely mortified that this has happened, and are doing our damndest to ensure it will never happen again."

He said the council was still investigating what had happened, but it appeared that for some reason, the computer system had not recognised half-yearly payments made by residents, and had instead identified them as being behind with monthly instalments.

He said it was "fiendishly difficult" dealing with council tax collection. "We have a small team of 12 people dealing with 200,000 communications per annum, sending things to 81,000 premises, so it isn't surprising when something occasionally goes wrong."

He said it would not have been possible for all 6,000 letters to be checked manually.

The problem had been exacerbated because so many letters went out at one time - a total of 6,000, the vast majority of which were sent out to people who did need reminding.

He said all the letters went out together to fit in with court dates for the small number of residents who might need to be taken to court.

The council would be looking at sending reminder letters out in smaller batches.

Open letter of apology

Dear Customer

I would like to offer my sincere apologies to you if you have wrongly received a reminder about your council tax in the last week.

I realise that this may have caused considerable worry and distress and I would like to reassure you that we are doing everything we can to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

We are checking all the reminders we have sent out and I will be sending you a personal apology if you have received a letter in error. Let me reassure you that the mistake will be corrected on our computer system and will not affect your credit rating in any way.

If you know that your council tax payments are up to date you do not have to contact the council, unless you feel you want more reassurance that we will be taking no action. Our council tax team is very busy trying to deal with all the enquiries, but the best number to ring is 551178.

The entire council tax team, including me, is frustrated and disappointed that this has happened and we are working hard to improve the important service we provide.

Yours faithfully,

James Drury

Head of Public Services

City of York Council

Updated: 08:26 Thursday, October 07, 2004