Tax-dodgers are being threatened with bankruptcy by Worcester City Council as it tries to claw back its share of the £4.5m owed to Worcestershire local authorities.

The tough talk comes despite warnings that pensioners and other people on low incomes cannot afford to pay high council tax bills.

Worcester City Council is the Worcestershire authority with the biggest hole in its finances, according to figures revealed by the GMB union.

It failed to collect £1.168m last year - although this was a £250,000 improvement on the 2003/04 amount.

Now councillors are threatening a crackdown on the bill-payers with the worst records. Councillor Simon Geraghty, the city's cabinet member for finance, said they would now look at bankrupting "repeat and consistent" non-payers.

"We need to focus our resources on consistently bad payers and we are now looking at the bankruptcy procedure," he said. "In the past, we have

gone down the committal route but it is costly and although someone may spend a short time in prison, you don't get the money back.

"With bankruptcy, if there are people who are failing to pay over a lengthy period - a year or 18 months - we can look at making them bankrupt if they have assets."

But Worcester pensioner Brian Hunt, of Lansdowne Rise, said some of the people not paying their bills would be the city's elderly.

"There are many pensioners in Worcester who simply can't afford to pay for their council tax," he said.

"With predicted rises next year, this number is going to increase and the council will be looking at a larger figure which remains uncollected."

"More money on the council tax bill means less food on the table for those who are less fortunate."

The city council has been forced into taking a tough line by the size of its tax shortfall - almost £200,000 worse than Worcestershire's second-worst collector, Wychavon District Council, which has a £986,000 deficit.

Worcester's figure was also twice as much as Malvern Hills District Council's £555,000 and Bromsgrove's £544,000 - the two most efficient tax-collecting local authorities in the county.

Wyre Forest District Council's £727,000 shortfall and Redditch's £664,000 complete the Worcestershire picture, with the total amount uncollected in the county adding up to £4.644m.

Mr Geraghty said a change of computer systems two-and-a-half years ago was still having a knock-on effect in the city, but welcomed the improvement from the previous year.

"When you change systems the computers are down for a little time and that hits the end-of-year figures," he said.

"Last year we managed to collect a lot of money after the end-of-year figures were released and we welcome any improvements, but £1m is still £1m and we need to be claiming it.

A total of £1.251m remained uncollected across the whole of Herefordshire in 2004/05.