A WHOPPING £345,000 in unpaid council tax and business rates has been written off across Worcester in just six months.

The shock figure, for the period between April and September this year, is 422 per cent higher than the sum written off in the same period of 2014, when it was just £66,000.

It means over the last two-and-a-half years £1 million of due taxes have gone begging.

It comes just months after Worcester City Council sent letters to 4,000 householders warning of court action unless they pay up.

Critical councillors have called the findings "unacceptable" and have urged more to be done to bring it down.

Worcester City Council has revealed that the write-offs for the six months relate to 159 different cases, including companies which went bust or people to refused to pay, could not pay or vanished without trace.

Because the 2015 data is so bad it means the council can now expect its write-offs to comfortably surge past the £373,000 it stopped chasing during the entire 2014/15 financial year, which ended in March.

Councillor Richard Boorn, Labour's finance spokesman, said: "We're getting to the point where surely our responsibility is to those council taxpayers who do pay their money.

"I know it's never going to be perfect, but I'm just fed up it's at an unacceptable level."

Council bosses have responded by saying around 98 per cent of the taxes it has to collect, comes in successfully.

The authority has also produced a report saying a "high number of bankruptcies and liquidations" have made the situation worse.

Lesley Meagher, the council's corporate director for resources, said: "The collection of this money is fairly constant and successful - it's the insolvencies around business rates that are far more complicated."

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.

Since April 2013 approximately £995,000 of council tax and business rates has been written off.

Around 11 per cent of that money was due to the city council with the rest set to fund the police, fire service and County Hall.