During the last two Parliaments I pressed the Treasury to make it more difficult for Councils to borrow large sums of money. As so often it took time to persuade Ministers and their department that waste was afoot and spending was too lax. I watched as various Councils went on a buying spree for commercial property, and renewable energy projects.
Prior to 2020 some Councils were buying up shops as they thought with rents exceeding the low interest rate charged on government loans they could gain more income to spend. They did not realise the private sector and the property agents were thrilled to sell out to them as many in the private market thought shops overvalued and thought rents would fall as online shopping reduced shop turnover. Covid lockdowns came along and accelerated that trend leading to large capital losses on the shops Councils had bought. Rents fell. When interest rates rose the disaster was complete with heavy losses.
Nottingham invested in its own energy company. It ran up large losses and put itself into Section 114 bankruptcy. Woking made too many bad property investments whilst Thurrock came a cropper with buying solar farms. They too went into Section 114. Birmingham underpaid its female staff and faced large back pay whilst also losing on its investments which took it to Section 114.
The government has undertaken a round of expensive bail outs. Birmingham was granted £1255 m, Woking £331 m, Bradford £220 m and Southampton £122 m with others getting multiple millions. Far from Councils being starved of money some have lobbied for huge sums to dig them out of financial difficulty or bankruptcy of their own making.
Taxpayers do not want Councillors and their officers playing at being investors in real estate and energy only to lose them a fortune. A well run Council keeps Council tax down and concentrates on providing good service in core areas. Too many bad Councils grandstand, over reach, add services they should stay out of and land up in a financial mess. Too many want to wreck our roads at great cost and dabble in business in ways that prove costly.
April 9, 2025
It is as if O level economics projects have been inflicted on the whole of UK. It has been clear to me for a long time that the greatest risk to one’s wealth and health arises from poor government – something UK seems to have in abundant surplus.
April 9, 2025
Indeed when you add up all of the taxes you pay, income tax, National insurance, VAT, Stamp Duty, DVLA Tax, Fuel Duty, Fuel Surcharges, Council Tax, Inheritance tax, etc, etc the Government gets more of our earnings and wealth than we do ourselves to spend as we wish.
April 9, 2025
@Berkshire Alan – that’s why all the revenue streams have different names, so you don’t see them as tax!
April 9, 2025
It’s only taxpayers money. It’s easy to be profligate with other people’s cash when you know you’ll never be held to account.
My council tax is now £2600 on a band D property
The roads are a disgrace and the streets are a mess. Currently the council are replacing a perfectly good town centre with some monstrous concrete blocks under an improvement scheme costing £1.5 million
Last year they spent 500,000 on a cycle lane so dangerous it’s been blocked off. I despair at the waste of my hard earned money.
April 9, 2025
Councils are microcosims of national government. Both live beyond their means which are taxation and the rates. Both are inventive of schemes to allow this. National government with bonds, money printing, and private finance initiatives. Local councils with property and green energy projects. In all cases indulged in by public servants operating way beyond their ability level and failing to approach what might be expected of their pay grade. In both cases it is other peoples money they spend in this casino of life, with no personal responsibility or penalty for failure. The rules for national and local spending require rewriting, but who will do it.
Hope you all watched Donald Trump last night getting back to basics with the reintroduction of coal to the US economy, combined with the slaughtering of red Ed thinking. Coal plus science and engineering need not be the great satan our current equivalent of CND would have you believe. Similar should happen here, the only downside being long overdue appoplexy in Islington.
April 9, 2025
‘reintroduction of coal to the US economy’
– so should we have supported Arthur Scargill in the miners’ strike?
What is clear is that we should have been supporting, a lot more, the High Tech Industry (and trying to create cars like the Germans) – from the 1980’s until now and beyond, including helping Cambridge to become world’s second Silicon Valley with Oxford – Cambridge with the hardware, Oxford with software, and the Manchester-Sheffield-Leeds area in bigger, bulkier manufacturing.
April 9, 2025
Those are extraordinary examples of bungling incompetence. Public companies are required by law to make statements in the notes to their accounts that they are a going concern. In essence that means they are required to say they expect to be able to achieve revenues and profitability to pay their bills for the next 12 months. This is to reassure those that trade with the company can rely on being paid for goods or service supplied or will get the goods or services they buy. It also alerts investors or lenders to any potential risks. It seems to me this formal obligation should also be placed on local authorities, with similar penalties for failure. While on the subject I think it should apply the the national government too. It is too easy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to kick this can down the road five years, based on dodgy OBR forecasts, when they won’t be in office anyway.
April 9, 2025
Good warning, what is no often referred to these days is the current year expected budget deficit — at £36 Billion! And that’s on their own forecasts, so we’ll blow through that with ease no doubt.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/spring-statement-2025-speech#:~:text=%E2%80%9Cstability%20rule%E2%80%9D%E2%80%A6-,%E2%80%A6,9.9bn%20in%202029%2D30.&text=That%20means%20that%20we%20are,Stability%20Rule%20two%20years%20early%E2%80%A6
We’re already paying 4.4% of GDP for interest service on debt, how much higher can that go?
April 9, 2025
Indeed not their money or so what do they care if they deliver value for money. So long as they get their large wages and pensions they are very happy blocking the roads with bus and bike lanes. Especially if they can mug people who stray a wheel into them. Or having DEI racist employment policies and £100k plus DEI and Net Zero officers!
The Birmingham problem is largely caused by the mad Labour equal pay act (for entirely different jobs) and the mad legal judgements where dinner ladies are deemed worth of the same pay as binmen (they nearly all are men). Perhaps we need to get the dinner ladies to justify their higher wages by clearing the refuse.
Wages need to be determined by market forces not law & judges. Should all footballers and actors be paid the same per hour, how would the learned judges compute these? Perhaps the less good ones should get more as they have to work harder!
April 9, 2025
‘ Taxpayers do not want Councillors and their officers playing at being investors in real estate and energy only to lose them a fortune.’
Croydon should also be named and shamed. Those responsible escape with no personal loss. Often they go on to repeat the process elsewhere.
What about Teesside? Land flogged off on the cheap. etc ed
April 9, 2025
The word not mentioned in Sir Johns piece is corruption.
The other word that needs to b
.e mentioned when discus council activities is bribery.
We could then mention enormous salaries and pensions. The Tax Payers Alliance recently reported the details.
Very troubling scale of inappropriate remuneration at councils up and down the country.
April 9, 2025
RE,
Agreed. “Rotten Boroughs” column in “Private Eye” has numerous examples every fortnight.
April 9, 2025
“A well run Council keeps Council tax down and concentrates on providing good service in core areas.”
Spot on. But does anyone on this blog have such a council?
My town, district and county councils all put up their tax by the maximum permitted. Services are no better. Waste is evident (ugly public sculptures appearing in town, £m roundabout “improvement” for non-existent cycles, etc). District speculated unsuccessfully in property.
At a local level we need legislation to curb councils’ ability to spend money on non-core activity. Bins, planning, mowing verges. That sort of thing. Stuff that’s difficult to get wrong. Not “encouraging” investment, tourism or “boosting” the economy or “reducing our carbon footprint”. They inevitably screw up on their wider aims and use wooly aims to squander our money on pet projects no-one voted for.
April 9, 2025
So who allowed Local Authorities to borrow vast sums, underwritten by taxpayers, and behave like Investment Companies?
That would be NuLabour and BluLabour. Not content with letting the Banks behave like Casinos and then bailing them out, they have encouraged Local Authorities to also “invest” … ie gamble with borrowed money … and now are also bailing them out.
And not one “Public Servant” in the Local Authorities has faced any penalty whatsoever for their incompetence and failures any more than the Banksters did (apart from Fred the Shred, who lost his Knighthood). Their six-figure salaries and gold-plated pensions are secure, regardless of their performance.
Local Authorities’ remit should be limited by the Government to provision of essential services and legislation should prevent them from behaving like Investment Companies.
April 9, 2025
There are reports this morning that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves is about to announce the re-nationalisation of the British Steel plant at Scunthorpe. To do so successfully the blast furnaces need supplies of iron ore as feedstock. Apparently, the Chinese owners have cancelled the orders due for delivery in May
Starmer and Reeves both claim to recognise the strategic importance of retaining the national ability to produce raw steel from blast furnaces. But the main driver of political involvement in this decision is the forthcoming election for Lincolnshire’s first directly elected mayor.
Farage and Tice both stuck their oars in yesterday, Neither of them know anything about steelmaking whatsoever.
April 9, 2025
SG
Neither does Rachel Reeves
April 10, 2025
The Labour Government knows nothing about business, manufacturing, science or anything else outside of how to hose £billions of borrowed money at the public sector.
April 9, 2025
All councils should be circumscribed in what activity they can undertake. They are NOT a government, they are a service and the services that they MUST provide are often neglected. Need I mention Birmingham causing a serious health hazard by not collecting waste?
Councils should NOT be divided by politics. Nobody should stand for election as a political party candidate. Is there really a division over whether to collect waste?
Councils should have no locus over highways – the Transport Department should deal with that.
No part of the state should be able to compete or ‘invest’ in the wealth producing sector owner which they have locus. You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
Any council (including Town Councils) which go into deficit should trigger a banning from public office of all Councillors.
Making Government fund all of its own folly so that it is visible is another good outcome of this process. All ‘off books’ debt must be visible and Parliament must be held to account.
April 9, 2025
As at every other election the only way to ensure moderately competent government whether at local or national level is to vote Conservative.
April 10, 2025
Really? My then “CONservative” local Government, just like the CONservative Government in Westminster, cheerfully destroyed the local economy with the Covid Tyranny:
Gates to parks locked; children’s playgrounds taped up so the equipment couldn’t be used; benches also taped so you couldn’t sit on them; ridiculous “messages” seared into pavements about keeping six feet apart …. and all the rest of the nonsense which was an absolutely pointless waste of money …. and all enthusiastically carried out by a “sensible” CON Local Authority …… which has now been booted out of Office, as was the local CON MP.
April 9, 2025
If we consider population, it’s Woking that lands the worst position, as its council debt equates to £18,756 per person, which is the highest ratio in the country. The bulk of the debt has been built up because of interest payments and the gold-plated, index linked final salary pension schemes that the council have awarded themselves
Councils were urged by Govey’s Dept of Levelling Up to undertake commercial investments, to generate income sources separate from grants, council tax, business rates, parking fees, speeding, planning charges etc. Town halls have bought hundreds of assets, from shopping centres to office parks, cinemas, energy firms and housing developments. Many of these investments were ill-advised – and are now at a loss on their books.
In his long career in government, the Machiavellian Govey managed to do a huge amount of damage to the UK, especially badgers and the environment. He definitely does not need a gong for services to anything
Reply The Councils were not told to commit these abuses of taxpayer money by Gove
April 9, 2025
Reply to reply: The LGA and DfIT did provide advice ‘for attracting private and foreign investment into local areas’. This occurred in 2019 under Graham Stuart MP, Minister for Investment, part of DfIT. He said
‘Foreign capital investment has the power to transform local communities, providing high quality infrastructure for residents and creating jobs for local economies… DfIT is committed to working with local government to drive private sector investment into regions across the UK to ensure the benefits of foreign capital investment are felt in every corner of the country’ Oct’19.
Is it surprising that LAs which had seen their national funding decreased during the 2010s tried these foreign capital investment?
ifs.org.uk 07/06/2024 ‘How have English councils’ funding and spending changed? 2010 to 2024’, IFS Report R318, 40 pp.
April 9, 2025
And where did two of those failed Woking councillors scuttle off to, after they messed up? Why, here in Wokingham. Better salaries here, for the same standard of work they showed in Woking? I wonder.
April 9, 2025
Beg pardon: the two are council officers, NOT councillors.
April 9, 2025
To be fair to Birmingham – those jobs dome by women were not equal to that done by the men.
A job’s worth should be determined by how much it costs to fill it, not some judge’s perception of what is equal.
April 9, 2025
The fatal flaw in any plan for devolution, local democracy, and decentralising power is that without fail local politicians are even more incompetent than national politicians.
April 9, 2025
My council tax here in Spain for the year is about the same as one month back in the UK and the services are far better. Something has gone seriously wrong with UK councils. They need to get back to basics, start providing better services, and reduce the excessive pay given to CEOs. There is no justification for paying 6-figure salaries to any council staff. We now have volunteers doing the work that councils once did, like picking up litter, maintaining parks, providing library services, unblocking drains, and weeding pavements. People can’t afford to pay these excessive council tax bills.
April 9, 2025
Brighton Council is also bust, having financed a 500 ft high pole on the seafront with a glass viewing gallery hoised up on steel cables. Unsurprisingly, few visitors wanted to pay £18 to endure vertigo or death when the same view is available for free from an adjecent hill
However, although it is impossible to communicate with their council tax department, it is proving very efficient at sending double council tax bills after Mr Goves’s levelling down ministry gave them permission to double tax second homes and furnished lettings. My tenant left 2 months ago and took most of his belongings and the house was in need of major redecoration and new flooring as well as filthy, with the garden like a jungle. It has taken 2 months to make it habitable but it has no beds and other furniture. I received a demand for £780 with £4400 pa for every month until I can let it. The other very efficient department is of course parking and fines, in common with most councils. In the past year I have been fined for unloading new windows outside my house, not moving my car for the mid day forbidden hour after 5 minutes overstay, when washing my car outside my garage, and when inadvertently going into a bus lane at night when rain prevented the road markings being visible and a bus obscured the entry sign. The latter was for £390 after passing 3 cameras seconds apart. The fine arrived with 1 day left to pay it.
But then they have to pay staff 100k + and have landlord licensing to set up and those pensions are very large.
April 9, 2025
The only way to have any chance of moderately competent government either at the local or national level is to vote Conservative. It’s not a guarantee of course, but a it does increase the chance.
I think the gloves need to come off in the local election campaign. The twin symbols of a rat and a knife would highlight what happens if you elect Labour local authorities – heaped up rubbish and an infestation of rats in Birmingham, increased knife crime and murder rate, especially amongst young people, in London following the election of #uselessKhan.
April 9, 2025
Kent CC invested millions in a very dodgy and risky investment which tanked
April 9, 2025
Which only goes to show that a lot of people elected as councillors aren’t up to the job. How you get better people I do not know under the present system where anyone can put themselves up for election. Qualifications required such as economics either from university or work related maybe. We seem to have a lot of care workers in government and locally which is commendable but when it comes to handling money and balancing the books I do not think it is a good way to follow when using other people’s money as most of these people see extra money they can obtain through allowances etc., as a way of living better themselves and not using their knowledge of survival for the benefit of others.
April 9, 2025
When I was a Councillor over 40 years ago, Councils were primarily a provider, albeit an inefficient and overstaffed provider of services, now they are primarily an inefficient and massively overstaffed provider of regulation and bureaucracy.
Then most of the Council’s (a metropolitan borough council) spending was on Education- now there is local management of schools and independent academies. The next biggest item was Social Services but Councils no longer actually run residential homes for the elderly and children and nursery classes (as when the private sector went into competition with them the Council run institutions were massively more expensive than those in the private sector). The next biggest service was leisure services but swimming pools (which are now usually quasi-independently run) and libraries are massively diminished in number. Council Housing is usually no longer directly run by Councils.Bins are no longer emptied weekly.
Admittedly much of the money is now going to fund support for ‘health conditions’ like autism that nobody had even heard of, let alone funded then and somehow people survived when such conditions were undiagnosed and unfunded.
Councils were never value for money but now it is just absurd – Council Tax should be capped for all at the level of the lowest Council Tax in the country, Wandsworth (which is a small fraction of what most charge in Council Tax) and even that is poor value for what they now do which is sensible and useful.
Incidentally I have made quite a lot of money buying up shops- Councils are just incompetent!
April 9, 2025
Very True ….there was a time when councils would vet a new business on their suitability for high street, now they’re happy with any money launding business so long as they pay business rates and be damned the community
April 9, 2025
A fair summary but who is going to curb this overspending and waste? Our county council asked us to think up ideas to spend money as they had Central Government money spare which if they didn’t spend it would would have it taken away.
April 9, 2025
Shouldn’t councillors who make risky investments with our money be held responsible, as directors are in private companies?
There is this theme running through most authorities, so it seems, including central government, that taxpayer’s money is actually the council’s/ government’s money – they forget all too quickly where the money originated and what their responsibilities to taxpayers are.
Too many things happen due to alleged council decisions, but I’m wondering how often the full council is consulted. We see road restrictions put in place, and we have no idea who authorised them – was it the full council or was it a select few powerful councillors exceeding their remit, or indeed, was it someone in the council bureaucracy that decides such things?
My impression of councils is that they have moved away from the concept of serving their community, to dictating to it.
April 9, 2025
Symptomatic of the State will and should provide that comes from to top.
I like many would ask how many of these bodies use taxpayer money to support Discrimination? After-all isn’t that what Diversity Inclusion and Equalities is, playing at politics with the taxpayer’s money. When all the taxpayer wants is the best of the best service.
April 9, 2025
There is also a notion that trickles down from above that taxpayer money is nothing but earned income by the authorities. No consideration given to the fact for every pound taken as tax is a pound out of circulation, a pound taken from the economy.
Things need to change, one of those changes is that so-called caps on expenditure, on what should and can be collected should be removed. Then the full cost of mediocre meddling by incompetence would be exposed.
Allowing money to trickle down from the general taxation pot to fund ‘political’ mistakes is in itself undemocratic. That while seemingly ‘well-meaning’ it is actually ballot box manipulation.
Assisting a less resourced area to move forward is different to just undermining democracy because you can, a line needs to be drawn.
April 9, 2025
Maybe it would be better if Councils collected all charges locally, including taxation and other rubbish. Then, instead of HMRC and other nuisance departments bothering citizens, people could live and operate in a more friendly area.
Central Government would invoice their client Councils for whatever services the Councils want and buy from them, subject to approval. Only then if Central Govt services were worth anything, and value for money, the Council would approve and pay them.
Citizens would move from one part of the land to another, according to where the best government was at any time, instead of waiting 5 years to dump out recurring incompetent ones with all their QUANGOs and hanger-on bozos wasting other people’s money.
April 9, 2025
Notts CC has just bought a large tract of farmland on which to plant a “carbon sink”. Meanwhile the roads, for example, are some of the worst in the country. Why can’t these people concentrate on the day job rather than wasting money on window dressing?
April 9, 2025
The EU has run out of money to fund the Ukraine war and to fund investments. Their solution is to ‘use’ citizen’s savings.
No permission from citizens was sought, and the suspicion is that the EU could dip into this pot whenever they wanted, with no recompense to those robbed.
I wonder when the UK scheme of a similar nature is going to be announced.
April 10, 2025
Reeves is working on it: Cash ISA “reform” is scheduled for the autumn Budget.
April 9, 2025
That puts a new slant on what is driving the war-mongers
April 9, 2025
We need to find a much better way of holding local politicians to account and for those politicians in turn to hold council management to account.
My idea is for EVERY council decision to be subject to a local referendum. That includes spending reserves or borrowing against future revenues. My hunch would be that residents would choose for their council to live within their means.
April 9, 2025
That could easily be done every May as an “add on” to local elections for minimal cost…
April 9, 2025
I thought councils were supposed to organise domestic waste collection and clean the streets. Not speculate with my ever increasing council tax.
April 9, 2025
Thebiggest waste is Regional Mayors, Combined Authorities & Regional Quango (Northern Powerhouse etc) ….just more and more levels of government …and spending
April 9, 2025
Another hot, sunny & windy day,but importing 16.6% of our energy from France (as at 09:00hrs) and councils are still investing in costly renewables, tridal energy projects and wind-turbines and promoting EVs at every chance ….all with taxpayers money
https://grid.iamkate.com/
April 9, 2025
If a Council goes into S114, does its “Board” have to immediately resign and an election called ?
April 9, 2025
Quite right; it is not as if the Councils are carrying out their day-to-day duties with any great efficiency. Farmers Weekly recently highlighted Dorset CC as the worst offender re planning applications taking on average over 3 years to process them. 14 Councils had unprocessed applications that were over 5 years old.
April 9, 2025
Personal surcharges for ‘reckless’ behaviour
April 9, 2025
How many of these councils were Labour ones ?
Almost all, no doubt, ad the rest probably probably Lib-Dim ones
April 9, 2025
Woman with a very young child gets two years in prison for a tweet.
April 9, 2025
Not entirely off topic, this has come my way this morning:
https://euobserver.com/EU%20Political/ar93b1f197
“EU-funded researchers urge rethink of ‘competitiveness’ agenda”
“In a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, eight EU-funded projects urge a rethink of the bloc’s competitiveness agenda: “We’re not opposing productivity, but the focus on sustainability is being lost and that’s very sad to see.””
I cannot read the article, but the gist is clear: just as Parliament decided in the UK:
SAVING THE PLANET IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN IMPROVING THE ECONOMY.
If people thought it was right and essential to embark on a project to try to limit global warming even if that meant a massive diversion of money and effort, maybe equivalent to 1% or 2% of GDP every year, they should have said that it would involve sacrifices and not pretend that we would be materially as well as morally better off. As it is we have lost more than half of our previous trend growth rate, and is that not one reason why central government is offloading more on to local councils without increasing their funding to cover the cost?
https://brexitcentral.com/does-brexit-mean-cliff-edge-more-shallow-pothole/
“… if we look at Office for National Statistics figures for the year-on-year growth of the UK’s GNP from 1949 to 2016, booms and busts make little difference to longer-term trends. Macmillan’s consumer bonanza; disengagement from empire; entry into the EEC; the miners’ strike; Thatcherism; Blairism; globalisation: these things produced, at most, modest effects. Background noise apart, UK GNP since 1949 has grown at about 2.5 per cent per annum, irrespective of the party in office, regardless of geopolitical events…. Only since the crash of 2008-9 has this growth rate halved … “
April 9, 2025
I do not know how, but I do believe a significant overhaul of Local councils is required to ensure the taxpayers never suffer from council members’ incompetence.
The same principle could be applied at the Government level to ensure the British citizens no longer have to pay for the serious errors made by underqualified Ministers and civil servants making bad decisions.
How much have bad government decisions cost us during this century, I wonder. Umpteen £Billions, I presume.
April 9, 2025
You are right, but it comes from the top. If the National Government spends money like there is no tomorrow, local councils will follow suit. For 25 years, National Governments have run deficit budgets while the majority of our MPs nod budgets and spending plans through, like nodding donkeys.
All our MPs seem to lack fire in their bellies and think there is a magic money tree. We are viciously overtaxed, and colossal amounts of money are wasted. The UK is heading for bankruptcy, yet MPs are fast asleep.
Net Zero is the perfect example. Name one MP, out of 650, who is demanding a full cost analysis and has done the research to know CO2 is not the slightest problem. Equally, who in the Civil Service is advising Ministers that it is a total disaster? We are cursed with incompetent government, Nationally and locally!
April 9, 2025
@Keith from Leeds – I fully agree, why are they there? Do they think ‘free-loading’ is an occupation?
April 9, 2025
Where ego and self-gratification get ahead of itself, is when those without experience and it is not part of the job think they can jump in and do better while they get to ‘play’ with taxpayers’ money.
Birmingham Council and bin collections. Why oh why did the Council think they should directly (hands on) do the job of collecting refuge? If they just stuck with handing out the contract for the collecting, they would simply be able to say to the contractor ‘you failed’ and get another contractor in. That’s called management!
It is not those that are paying at fault (the tax/rate payer), they are the ones that are being punished for the lack of ineptitude of numpties.
It’s the same with the other political empires Sir John has mentioned they get endless amount of other people’s money to throw around yet are clueless on how to manage expenditure. While Government and Parliament are demonstrating that money from others is confetti it is no surprise that others follow the lead.
The bailouts have to stop, it’s the only way those with ego will get to recognize they are out of their depth. The taxpayer cant keep having their money squandered.
April 9, 2025
I see Miliband has ordered that wells that are built and ready to frack gas are to be sealed so they can never be used.
What insanity is this! What if a new Covid closes world trade. What if war in Europe spreads and gas prices rocket. It is literal madness.
April 9, 2025
432 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …
April 10, 2025
Not sure about Birmingham. It wasn’t obvious that its dinner ladies should be paid the same as its dustmen, let alone retrospectively as Blair’s delinquent Supreme Court ordained. That judgement was a classic union led ideological one from brainwashed lawyers, not a sensible pragmatic decision from people concerned with the welfare of the city. The Supreme Court should not have been poking its nose into the dispute anyway. What does it know about setting budgets in the second city?
April 11, 2025
Spot on Sir John and too
many have foolishly declared a climate emergency! Local Councillors and their senior officials should be held responsible for their staggering levels of incompetence.