Council tax typo cost authority £200,000

Bristol City Council - A council spent almost £200,000 on letters to correct a typing error.

Transcript

00:00Bristol City Council has admitted spending almost £200,000 correcting what it described

00:07as a simple typing mistake in its council tax letters. The error appeared in bills sent to

00:12thousands of households across the city earlier this year. Although the total amounts people

00:17overcorrect, the percentage increases for police and fire services had been accidentally swapped

00:22round. That meant the Police and Crime Commissioner for Avon and Somerset was shown with a rise of 5.9%,

00:28while the Avon Fire Authority increase was listed as 5% when in fact those figures should have been

00:35the other way around. The mix-up led to confusion among residents, many of whom contacted the council

00:41to query whether their bills were wrong or if further rises were planned. Once the mistake had

00:46been identified, the authority decided to issue entirely new letters to every affected household.

00:52At a total cost of £198,000 for printing, postage and the extra administrative work needed to correct

01:00the problem. The issue was raised by Labour Councillor Don Alexander in a written question

01:05to the leader of the council, Tony Dyer. In his response, the leader confirmed the cost of the

01:10correction and said the process for sending out council tax bills has now been reviewed and strengthened

01:15to include new approval stages and an additional verification step. A council spokesperson said

01:21the authority deeply regrets the error and the additional cost to taxpayers. Since the incident,

01:26all letters must now be checked and signed off by the council tax manager before being sent out.

01:32The spokesperson added that while there was a human error involved, it's prompted new safeguards,

01:36clearer oversight and extra quality controls to make sure something like this doesn't happen again

01:41and to help rebuild public confidence in the council's systems.