COUNCILS should be given new powers to help them collect taxes and rents to plug the pension fund gap, according to a trade union.

Senior members of the GMB union want to see a change to the law and to Inland Revenue rules to give councils the power to make sure landlords ensure their tenants pay council tax.

It claims if local authorities in Yorkshire and Humberside were able to collect all the funds they are owed, they could "easily" find the £200 million a year that council pension schemes need.

The union has revealed that the 21 Yorkshire and Humberside councils were unable to collect a total of £73,128,305 in tax and rents in the financial year 2003/2004.

In York, this was £3.6 million, but resources chief, Coun Quentin MacDonald, said the council was committed to collecting all its owed money.

He said the authority set a collection target of 97 per cent of all monies owed and that it was on target to achieve that this year.

Coun MacDonald added that, each year, the authority could be collecting remnants of debts, from over the past five years.

"We do not just give up or decide not to collect," he said. "Each year we are collecting money from each of the last five years."

The GMB study places York 16th in the regional table. In East Riding of Yorkshire, the total of uncollected council tax and rents came to £3,591,289 in 2003/2004. Selby, in 12th place, had £1,367,695 in monies owing, while Scarborough was unable to collect just over £1 million in council tax.

The GMB said uncollected council tax and rents hit £836 million for England's 354 councils.

The organisation said it was not prepared to see people "cheating the system" to the detriment of its members.

Neil Derrick, GMB senior organiser in public services, said: "The local authority pension scheme needs £200 million per annum to enable it to pay pensions to GMB members without cutting benefits or raising the retirement age. If councils could collect the monies that they are owed they could easily fix the pension gap problem. GMB wants to see councils collecting all the monies they are owed for the council tax and council rents.

"GMB wants to see changes in the law and in the Inland Revenue rules to give councils powers to enable landlords to ensure that their tenants pay their council tax."

Coun MacDonald, who is also a member of the North Yorkshire pension fund committee, said the region already had one of the "most imaginative and forward- looking" schemes in the country.

Updated: 10:19 Wednesday, July 20, 2005