Stroud council has issued an apology after a direct debit error meant they took council tax payments early from over 5,700 bank accounts two days before Christmas.

The payments were scheduled for 28 December but they ended up being taken on 23 December.

The district council also discovered the same error was going to occur the following week. In an attempt to preempt this, they made provision to pay the same amount of money into the accounts before it was taken out.

However, this did not work for 1,700 accounts, which had to wait until early January before being compensated.

‘We apologise to anyone who has been inconvenienced and would like to reassure them that we will refund any bank charges they have incurred from this error,’ a statement on Stroud’s website said.

‘We will be writing to everyone who has been affected over the next few days to ensure that they are not out of pocket.’

Council leader Steve Lydon said: 'Please accept my sincere apologies if you were one of those affected by the mistake we made with our council tax direct debits.

'I am very sorry that it happened. I have asked for a full report of how and why it occurred. This will be made public, and immediate steps are being taken to ensure this does not happen again.'