List of categories and total amount written off in past three years
Request received 3 August 2026
Please provide the list of categories or headings under which your department records financial losses, write-offs, and special payments.
For each category, please provide the total monetary value recorded for the last three completed financial years.
To confirm, all I require is the category name that your department uses and the total amount recorded under that category. These figures should already be a matter of record within your existing financial reporting processes and therefore should not require any additional analysis or reclassification.
Categories may include, but are not limited to: fraud, overpayments, unrecoverable debts, theft, misappropriation, losses due to error or negligence, contract failures, procurement disputes or terminated contracts, failed or abandoned IT/digital projects, compensation payments, ex-gratia payments, and payments made under settlement agreements (including those containing confidentiality clauses or non-disclosure provisions).
If any category or heading used to record losses has changed name, been merged, split, or reclassified during the three-year period, please identify the change.
For clarity, an example of the type of output requested for each category and for each financial year would be totals such as:
• £50m recorded under fraud
• £120m recorded under overpayments
• £300m recorded under unrecoverable debts
• £40m recorded under settlement agreements
• £200m recorded under failed IT projects
• £80m recorded under procurement disputes
• These examples are illustrative only. Please provide the categories actually used by your department and the totals recorded under each for each of the last three years.
Responded 1 September 2026
In response to your question above, the recorded losses for East Cambridgeshire District Council for the previous three financial years are:
2023/24
Write off – Council Tax 20,503.19
Write off – Business Rates 10,879.79
2024/25
Write off – Council Tax 23,647.32
Write off – Business Rates 112,867.92
2025/26
Write off – Council Tax 59,184.56
Write off – Business Rates 73,984.17