BASILDON Council has written off nearly £160,000 in unpaid debts.

The council is no longer pursuing eight businesses over a total of £97,857 unpaid business rates, after they went into liquidation or their bosses were declared bankrupt.

It has also stopped chasing four residents for a total of £40,831 of wrongly claimed housing benefit, and a further two people over unpaid council tax totalling £21,115.

These cases were dropped because they were unable to trace one person who absconded owing £6,435 council tax, three people went bankrupt and in the case of two separate people who wrongly claimed £36,038 housing benefit between them, it was deemed “not beneficial to pursue them”.

A council report over the council tax and housing benefits said the council cannot legally pursue bankruptcy debts. Tracing people is stopped if it is uneconomic to continue and pursuing debts is stopped if it mounts up further debts for the council which cannot be recovered.

It added: “When taking recovery action there is a need to balance the costs of action against the assets that the debtor has, outside checks are undertaken in order to establish the benefits of pursuing the debt and incurring costs.”