By Local Democracy Reporter Simon Finlay
Debts of nearly £4m for social care in Kent have been written off in the past five years, according to new figures.
The cost of bad debts to Kent County Council (KCC) has been revealed in a disclosure under Freedom of Information Act.
The FoI response revealed that £3,919,551 was written off between April 2020 and April 2025.
One former finance chief at KCC said the reasons for write-offs were “many and varied” and the top table under the previous Conservative administration was aware.
Social care remains one of the areas of KCC statutory service provision that is under intense pressure with squeezed budgets, soaring costs and ever-increasing demand.
Write-offs hit a peak in 2022-23 at £1.03m dropping to £969,000 in the 2023-24 period.
By 2024-25, those bad debts had dropped to just over £660,000 but were still higher than the £553,000 figure five years previously.
Leader of the Conservative group at KCC and a former deputy cabinet member for finance under the previous administration, Cllr Harry Rayner, said: “They were regularly drawn to our attention and there are often all sorts of different reasons for them being written off.
“Sometimes when an old person has to go into nursing or residential care, the family does not come up with the cash or they have had a falling out.
“In others, there can be a situation where the estate is pursued in the courts but it turns out there is a shortfall in the final amount and the rest has to be written off. I know of some cases where a parent signs the property over to a member of the family and no longer has the asset to realise the cash for the care when it is needed.
“There is no question, either, that some people wilfully do not pay and plan to do so years in advance and in one instance I heard of where the property was transferred to an offshore company.”
The write-offs were not made under the new Reform UK leadership at KCC.
A KCC statement said: “The £3.9m written off over the past five financial years is less than 1% of the total value of charges raised during the same period. KCC has strict procedures in place for the completion of write offs in line with our financial regulations, a write off can only be completed when this strict criterion is met and there is a justifiable reason to do so.
“Significant work has been undertaken in adult social care to implement a focus on early intervention with debt, to tackle the root cause of the issue at the earliest opportunity and prevent the need for any write off down the line.
“This work is alongside the introduction of a new finance system with improved controls for the management of debt.”
The FoI revealed that 125 court actions were sanctioned to recover unpaid costs by KCC would not disclose how much, despite holding the details.
KCC claims it is exempt from divulging information because it could prejudice “any civil proceedings” brought by a public authority.
KCC also argued that it fails the public interest test because disclosure may have “a negative impact on KCC’s ability to manage debt collection effectively, and it may influence the behaviour of debtors…”
The authority explains: “KCC have considered the public interest arguments both for and against disclosure, and we consider the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest disclosure at this time.”
Asked for the total legal costs incurred by KCC in pursuing bad debts through the courts, the FoI response stated: “This information is not held in a centrally reportable format and is therefore not held for the purposes of this request.”
This week, KCC responded to survey by Association of Directors of Social Services (ADASS) which sounded alarm bells over the crisis in social care across the country.
Diane Morton, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Health, praised KCC social care professionals added: “No council can consistently deliver the best quality care without the right funding settlement to match demand. The current funding model is broken and no longer fit for purpose.”
If debt is “written off”, does it mean that people who are owed money lose out?😐