COUNCIL bosses in Worcester have defended the writing-off of £345,000 in unpaid taxes - calling it a "last resort".

As your Worcester News revealed last week, between April and September the hefty sum was written off by the city council after the debts became impossible to chase.

The sum is 422 per cent higher than the amount written off in the same period of 2014 when it was just £66,000 - meaning in 2.5 years more than £1 million has gone begging.

But speaking during a cabinet meeting, the leadership said people must keep the figure in "perspective".

Councillor Simon Geraghty, the leader, said: "It's always important to have perspective on these things.

"We always want people to pay their dues and we will do whatever possible to recover them.

"But we must look at the perspective of just how much money the council handles here, we want to collect every single pound possible, but sometimes that isn't possible."

Councillor Marc Bayliss, the deputy leader, said: "We only ever do this when there is absolutely no hope of recovering it."

He also added that the £345,000 figure came about from a relatively small number of big debts.

Council bosses do manage to collect around 98 per cent of the taxes owed, both from the public and businesses.

Lesley Meagher, the council's corporate director for resources, said the overall sum was "more than £100 million" last year.

"Just an example I recently wrote-off a debt dating back from 2009 - that will show up in the figures for quarter three (the period between October and December this year) even though it dates back to then," he said.

"That's why there is no hard and fast rule as to why you can't look at peaks and troughs with this, it does fluctuate."

Council bosses say the writing off of debts are a last resort, and that the reasons for it vary – including companies going under and residents dying or cutting off contact.

It also keeps a database of all historic write-offs and says old debts can be chased up again if any fresh details come to light.

Last week Councillor Richard Boorn, Labour's finance spokesman, called the latest figures "unacceptable".

It comes months after the council sent letters to 4,000 householders warning of court action unless they pay up.

Around 11 per cent of that cash goes to the city council, with the rest funding the county council, police and fire service.

* HERE is what was said about this last week.