MORE than £160,000 debts have been written off by Wychavon District Council after it said it had exhausted all avenues of recovery.

Reassurances have been made that the total £160,211.44 does not represent a troubling figure for the council because debts totalling £300,451.27 were written off for the whole of last year, while that figure was £369,798.70 in 2006/07.

At a meeting of the executive board Councillor Bob Banks, executive board member for resources, said: “These numbers do seem to involve very large amounts of money but it’s important to keep them in context.”

Following the approval of the executive board a total 25 debts more than £660 amounting to £43,265.16 from February to Septmber this year were written off, while it was noted 129 debts under £660 totalling £21,515.11 had been written off under the authority delegated to deputy managing director Vic Allison.

Sixty bankruptcy and liquidation debts totalling £95,431.17 were also written off because they had accrued.

Of this total of 214 cases, 113 related to council tax, 36 were to do with business rates, while there were 65 sundry debtors, including housing benefity debtors.

Coun Banks said debts are only written off when all other avenues of recovering the money have been exhausted.

“The amount of money collected doesn’t bare any relation to the effort put into trying to collect them,” he said.

Deputy managing director Vic Allison reassured councillors that if anybody who owed the council money “came back on the scene” they would chase them up.