Mansfield District Council wrote off over £250k in Council Tax debt last year.

Nationally, councils wrote off £170 million of uncollectable council tax during the same time period.

Council tax can be written off when the outstanding balance is low or if the debtor absconds or dies.

However, if you don't pay your council tax and arrears build up, you could be facing legal action.

You can be sent to prison for up to 3 months if the court decides you don’t have a good reason to not pay your Council Tax and you refuse to do so.

Mick Andrews, Director of Commerce and Customer Services at Mansfield District Council, said:

"Mansfield District Council was due to collect £52.5m in Council Tax in 2017/18 on behalf of the district council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottinghamshire Police, Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service and Warsop Parish Council. We collected 97.3% of this, as we did in 2016/2017.

"The council takes a proactive approach and uses all available powers to collect debt. The amounts written off relate only to those bills where all recovery action has proved unsuccessful and once the likelihood of recovery is low.

"The council is required to write off this debt so that it does not overstate the expected income in its accounts. Writing off does not mean that continued recovery action is not taken. Debt collection can often be a long-term process and will be pursued for a number of years.

“There are a number of reasons for debt being written off for example where the debtor has absconded, when the debtor is deceased, if the debt becomes irrecoverable or if there is only a small balance outstanding."