THE figures were startling. More than £18m went uncollected in council tax in Hampshire last year. It works out as more than 14,000 households evading payments.

The debt is enough to pay for a new secondary school or about ten primary schools, it could build almost two miles of dual carriageway or replace more than 3,500 street lights.

The revelation provoked comments such as: "The system isn't good enough to rout the dodgers out and the punishment is not good enough either."

But are Hampshire councils a soft touch when it comes to council tax dodgers?

Southampton City Council's 94.5 per cent collection rate in 2006/7 was the second worst in the county behind Portsmouth.

About £3.9m went uncollected by March 31 - out of the £70.2m the council had expected to receive.

Yet closer examination shows that the council does actually claw back most of the council tax.

It pursues non-payers through the courts until the debt has to be written off.

The council has written off an average of £510,000 a year over the past seven years, bringing its actual collection rate above 99 per cent.

It is a much smaller sum than the £4m or £5m not paid on time.

Councillor Jeremy Moulton, Cabinet member for resources, explained: "Our policy is never to write off a debt in the year it is owed.

"We pursue outstanding council tax bills for years and we only ever write off a debt as a last resort. Even then we can reinstate a debt if the payee who has disappeared re-emerges."

Yet opponents of the council tax believe collection rates could be improved if it was seen as a fairer tax.

The tax, a property-based levy introduced in 1993, has become more and more unpopular as bills have doubled in the past decade.

As Dr Mark Farwell of Solent University points out Hampshire actually has one of one of the better collection rates in the country.

The poll tax or community charge - which council tax replaced - was even more hated and difficult to collect.

Dr Falwell said about 10,000 people apparently disappeared in Hampshire in 1991 to avoid paying it, while in some areas non-payment reached 50 per cent.

"Certainly, it's almost impossible to tax people like that but it's impossible not to get someone if they are attached to a property," he said.

Council tax was one of the few debts that could result in a prison sentence.

Courts have powers to impose sentences of up to three months for non-payers that reach the end of the line.

IsItFair campaigner Christine Melsom admitted a lot of the so called tax dodgers were habitual non-payers but said thousands of households were showing council tax was not, as Government claims, an "easy tax to collect".

Her group wants the Government to pay more grant so councils can lower their taxes.

In the longer term core services such as education and social services should be put back in the finances of central government, thereby slimming the bill for local services that could be collected through income tax or a reformed council tax without bandings.

She said: "It's time the Local Government Association stood up to the Government and told it to listen to what they've got to say.

"People cannot afford to pay any more. Pensioners are paying 22 per cent of their gross income in council tax."

Yet whatever the form of local tax collection, all have been met with derision and protests.

All will have inevitable winners and losers, who undoubtedly will cry foul.