Helping you achieve timely, accurate and efficient accounting for NNDR and council tax.
In 2019/20 local authorities collected a total of £31.6bn in council tax and £25.6bn in non domestic rates (NDRs), (irrespective of the year to which it related). These were increases of £1.8bn and £0.6bn respectively over 2018/19.
It's clear that the collection fund is one of the most important determinants of the resources available to a local authority. Council tax and NDR income is crucial to the continuing resilience of an authority.
Accounting for both, however, can be time consuming and may eat into the resources and time of finance professionals, staff who are perhaps needed elsewhere. But it is clear that accounting for the collection fund and its general fund impact are areas of accounting and income that must be accurate and also timely. CIPFA offers much help in this area.
How we can help
CIPFA's Finance Advisory Network team offer flexible support to local authorities all year round, whether preparing, implementing or reviewing collection fund accounting and its general fund impact. This includes our collection fund models, two Excel workbooks that guide you step by step through compiling the NDR and council tax collection fund, the required journals and what the final outturn position, collection fund and general fund should look like. The NDR model also calculates the safety net or levy position and can be used by NDR pools to establish the pool benefit.
This can be used as a standalone or in concert with further support:
- consultancy – we can help you close your collection fund at the year end, with a CIPFA expert undertaking the work with or for you
- review of your own approach to your collection fund
- health check of previous year's collection fund ahead of this year's preparation
Find out more
Contact Mark Catlow, FAN network adviser, to discuss how we can help you: mark.catlow@cipfa.org, or call customer services on 020 7 543 5600.