Brent Council recently signed a deal with Crapita Business Services for council tax and business rates administration and IT support systems. Reported to be worth £15m over 5 years, the function of the contract is to increase the council tax collection rate, with Crapita giving a guaranteed a collection rate for council tax and an anticipated £4.6 million in savings for the Council over the initial term of the contract.

The Council General Purposes Committee recently set the 2011/12 collection rate for council tax at 97.5%, as it has been since 2001/02. As you can see, in recent years there is still a considerable way to go to reach 97.5% and apart from 2009/10 the collection is still considerably short of the 97.5%
target.

Let’s hope the arrangement with Crapita can squeeze out the extra 2% that Brent Council can’t quite manage. I wonder what the collection rate guarantee for council tax is… and if its 97.5% or greater…

Figures on page 6 of Public Document Pack downloaded from Agenda and minutes pages of General Purposes Committee Tuesday, 25 January 2011 7.00 pm.

Brent Council must be expecting numbers as the hearing. The Licensing Committee has got the main chamber for tonight’s session.

A new record set at Brent Town Hall for a sub-committee meeting. 70 or more local residents present for Licensing Committee hearing on the extension of the License of the Herritage Inn.

Just a quick post while the Councillors get legal advice on the adjournment request from the applicant.

New signing at Cricklewood library now that Brent Archive has moved out.

Any chance of new planting too?

Local residents group North West Two are now using Fix My Street to file reports with Brent Council. I’ll be working with the other residents groups in my area to get links to FMS on all the community websites I can.

Fix My Street (FMS) is A LOT faster and easier than using the Brent Council reporting system. All I need to do to report via FMS is enter the street name, choose the right street and then write up the problem. It’s certainly easier than burrowing through Brent Councils website to find the right e-form to complete when all I want to do is report a broken paving slap or some dumped rubbish.

Using FMS is a great way of making public the problems that are reported to Brent Council.The openness of this tool could reduce the number of duplicate issues reported to the council. I wonder how long it’ll be before Brent adopt a similar method of receiving reports from residents.