Why are so many councils going bust? | UK politics | The New Statesman podcast

More councils have gone bust in 2023 than in the 30 years before 2018, with eight effectively declaring bankruptcy since that year.

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But why are councils going bust? Anoosh Chakelian, Britain editor, is joined by policy correspondent Megan Kenyon and Jonny Ball, associate editor of the New Statesman’s policy section, Spotlight, to delve into what’s happening in townhalls across the country.

Read the pieces mentioned in this video.

Jonny’s exclusive polling: https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/2023/11/exclusive-poll-conservative-councillors-rishi-sunak-government

Megan’s council bankruptcy tracker: https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/economic-growth/regional-development/2024/01/council-bankruptcy-tracker-local-government-authorities-finances

Anoosh’s report on Thurrock: https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-report/2023/08/thurrock-council-bankrupt-community-gambled

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The New Statesman podcast is now on YouTube. Anoosh Chakelian and New Statesman colleagues including political editor Andrew Marr discuss the latest in UK politics news, helping you understand the forces shaping British politics today.

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Local government has faced more Cuts than any other area since austerity began in 2010 more councils went bust in 2023 than in the 30 years before 2018 with eight effectively declaring bankruptcy since that year northamptonshire cyen slau Northland thork woking Birmingham and Nottingham a survey from the local government

Association found almost one in five counselors think it’s likely their councils will go under by the end of this year because of a lack of funding to keep key Services running the top 10% of the poorest councils in England have suffered a 30% average cut in funding

Between 2010 and 2024 according to the specialist interest group of municipal authorities the same research found the richest 10% of councils have had a 10% cut on average in the same period so why are council’s going bust to delve into what’s happening in town halls across the country I’m delighted to be joined

In the studio by our policy correspondent Megan Kenyan who joined the new Statesman recently from the local government Chronicle and Johnny B associate editor of the new statesman’s policy section Spotlight so thanks so much for joining me both of you and I feel like this is all nerds together

Because this is a subject that we’ve all covered for quite a long time isn’t it yourself a news so first of all you know I’ve mentioned bankruptcy but councils can’t actually go bankrupt so Megan do you want to explain what it actually means if a council goes bankrupt what does it

Do in this context yeah so when a council goes effectively bankrupt they issue what’s called a section one4 notice um which is issued by their Chief Financial Officer and it basically says because councils have certain duties that they are legally required to do they’re able to still do those duties

But all other spending is is frozen so that’s what it means it’s it councils can’t technically go bankrupt but that’s what happens when we say section 114 notice so yeah yeah and they send in Commissioners from the government don’t they to go and sort of make sure that

They they only spend on the things they’re legally required to spend money on that tends to be the case yeah although not always basically the Commissioners are there to hold their hands through any new spending decisions and um any sell-offs that they might have to do as a result of the budget

Shortfalls yeah right okay and so Megan you’ve got a a fascinating tracker on the new statesman’s policy uh section online Spotlight and I I think all our listeners should go and have a look at it I mean I think I go on it at least three times a week There’s this quite

Grim map on there showing which councils have gone under already and which are most at risk and you’re updating that can you take us through some of the places that have gone under and sort of the the various reasons why that’s happened yeah so we’re kind of Tracking

Not only the ones that have gone under but ones that could ones that have got high levels of debt um and ones that have kind of said they might in the future so the ones that have gone um issued to section 114 most recently are so Nottingham City Council was in

November last year Nottingham had actually issued a section 114 in 2021 um and that was down to basically they had used money from their housing revenue account which is um sort of some ring fenc funding but also where money from Social rent goes for the council they had used money from that account

For General spending which councils aren’t allowed to do um and when they discovered that unlawful spending they couldn’t then balance their budget so they had to issue a section 114 the one that they issued last year was more to do with kind of what we’re seeing more generally in local

Government which is that demand for services is completely outstripping the amount of money that councils have to deliver them um so in areas such as children’s and adult social care and in housing um those are serious pressures and I think Nottingham you know it had had some Financial turbulence over the

Past few years and then got to 2023 and kind of found that on top of that you know Government funding had not kept up with the amount of demand they’d had for the services they they have to deliver like social care yeah um so that was one another was Birmingham which was in

September last year um this one’s slightly different in that there were several historic issues so um Birmingham C council is actually the largest um Council in the UK and um basically they had had to issue a sexual 114 due to um they had a 760 million pound Bill to

Settle equal pay claims against the council so um they they just kind of found themselves unable to keep up with the number of claims that they had um and they’ve actually said that so far the council spent 1 billion pounds settling these equal pay claims but actually they estimate estimate that the

Remaining claims will cost a further 120 million pound wow okay um so yeah so that’s like 1.1 billion pound sort of because of this festering equal pay claim yeah um it’s it’s quite it’s it’s massive um but alongside that and this is quite topical they had tried to um

Roll out a new it system called Oracle which had gone very badly and actually ended up it’s ended up that it’s expected to cost them1 million pounds to rectify this sort of rubbish system basically right which is a lot of money um against its annual budget which is

Just under 3.2 billion a year yeah W it’s interesting because in the cases of some of these collapsed councils um if we can call them that there are some very specific circumstances that led to them having to issue a section 114 and I remember going to North Hampton County

Council which was the first to go in this period since 2010 it was 2018 I don’t think another Council had gone under for 30 years before that one um and it had made all sorts of poor financial decisions it had tried to Outsource loads of its services um including Child Protection Services

Really fundamental services and in some cases it was being charged more than the market rate back for them um and as well as that it sort of had this attempt to a commercial property portfolio when I went I went to see this um sparkling new Council building called one Angel Square

You know all Ang angles and exciting copper and glass and they’d actually had to sell it off um four months after they’d bought it for 53 million pounds and it was kind of like this symbol this white elephant in the center of town that represented its profligacy and

You’ve seen similar things happening in woking um cuden tried to create its own in-house um housing developer and that created some white elephant redevelopments as well but obviously the circumstances like you hinted at there Megan um for making poor financial decisions and trying to save money in these Innovative but ill thought through

Ways are common of all councils and you me you mentioned um social care temporary accommodation and other pressures that are are on um councils and we’ll talk about that in more detail um but also the fact that they councils were encouraged to invest weren’t they they were encouraged to make these kind

Of Investments and the audit commission was abolished in 2015 and so that kind of set the scene for making riskier bets yeah and uh I think something that had happened in 2020 was um the public work Works uh Public Work loans board um before there had kind of been a

Commission which oversaw loans but now that’s gone directly to the treasury so I think it I think when that happened there was kind of a lot of concern that you know we’re getting ourselves into a bit of trouble with councils potentially taking out loans that aren’t then kind

Of being signed off properly or have the proper scrutiny I mean the audit backlog in local government at the moment is is so is so backed up and has been for some time I mean for example woking you know its accounts hadn’t been signed off for several years when it issued a section

114 notice and I think if there were the proper checks and balances there it might not have got to a state where it faced a 1.2 billion pound deficit against Co funding of6 million pounds yeah yeah yeah I mean Thor is another great example I went there um

Last year and that’s that went um bust at the end of 2022 and they just made some extraordinary um investment decisions on things that have absolutely nothing to do with the town so investing in solar Farms as far away as Wilshire and they just didn’t get a return on

Those Investments but the private investors that had been tasked perfectly legally with with investing this money made a lot from it um and so you’ve got a broke town and sort of some people who have done quite well out of it and um a council that clearly didn’t have the

Expertise to invest in the way that you know people who are experts in that field might do um and before we get on to um what kind of pressure councils are under Johnny you’ve been surveying councilors in England um and you’ve had some pretty interesting results so do

You want to take us through how their feeling about the viability of their own councils and also the cuts that they’re having to make absolutely yeah it should be said that this poll was conducted sort of late last year um but it does kind of mirror other polls that other

Organizations have done like the local government Association poll that you mentioned earlier that said I think it was uh one in five councils think it’ll be likely or very likely that they’ll have to issue one of these section 114 bankruptcy notices and we had a very similar result it was around 528

Counselors and we actually got a slightly higher higher number on the bankruptcy question than the LGA it was almost a quarter of councilors said that they would um be likely um or very likely to go bankrupt um and that included a lot of conservative counselors as well this wasn’t a party

Political problem and I think the government have tried to present it a little bit as a party political problem saying that this is sort of propagate um labor councils who don’t know how to manage their budgets and but this is something you’re seeing across the board now as you mentioned there were there

Were governance issues um in Birmingham um and the issue with the uh outstanding legal claims for their their their pay issues from the 1970s I think that dates back to and also Nottingham have governance issues that are long-standing they set up a um a publicly owned Energy company called Robin Hood energy um

Which went completely bust and made real pigs here it they didn’t have the expertise or the Personnel to set up an energy company and it um it it very quickly went South but a lot of these Investments as you said have been made by Tory councils as well um and what’s

Really spared it on has being that sort of that cut between like 30% and sometimes 2third of the of the revenue support grants that they get from government so they’ve just had to compensate with that cut somewhere so they got into the commercial property Market real estate market all kinds of

Things buying hotels um for some councils it’s gone okay um and for example Liverpool Council they own the the I know they own the conference center that labor party conferen is of often held in every year that we all go to that must make the council a fortune although Liverpool has

Its own governance issues which aren’t necessarily related to issuing section 114s but a separate to that we won’t go into that that’s a whole other episode a whole other episode yeah don’t take us down that rabbit hole exactly I’ll never shut up if we did but the other thing

Our poll found um a bit of sort of qualitative response to the thought it was interesting from a labor counselor all remain an anonymous but one said that um a massive worry is that labor won’t make that much difference I haven’t seen any signs of a better settlement for local authorities and

Without that we are all slipping closer to the abyss that was a direct quote from one of them and I interviewed the shadow Minister for local government last year Alex Alex Norris he’s now Shadow Minister for policing which tells you a little bit about the sort of churn

You get in the sort of ministerial and Shadow ministerial local government position it’s now Jim mcmah who who was the death of secretary at one point um but he was also leader of Olden council at one point so it’s not like he doesn’t know his stuff but I I I I pushed Alex

Nor Norris a few times to say will you restore that Council funding to sort of 2010 levels more towards 2010 levels um you know if you got one in four saying that they they’re likely or very likely to go bankrupt that could be 70 80 bankrupt cities or or town councils um

And he wouldn’t commit to it basically he kept saying um you got to have to wait till a Manifesto and given the fiscal constraints that the labor party keep emphasizing that they’re going to be under um a lot of counselors according to this poll um and other polls that other organizations have

Carried out a lot of councilors are feeling very Bleak about the sort of fiscal Outlook in the next few years yeah well it’s interesting I mean let’s come on to that because um I think Angela Rena has recently said that it will be a long slog rather than a m

Magic wand to help sort of fix Town Halls if labor get into Power which doesn’t sound like there’s a big settlement forthcoming and actually that brings problems of its own I heard from a labor counselor up in Yorkshire who was saying actually there’s a lot of councils that think or assume Labor’s

Going to be more generous when it comes into government so are still spending are spending as if like a big solution is Round the Corner and actually getting more closer and closer to bankruptcy because of that perhaps false hope we don’t know we don’t know what labor will

Do if they get in so that’s one problem but another is that they do have this policy of a fair wage settlement for social care workers and that would be in their first 100 days in office they say and while you know this the principle of it is lorded by labor councilors of

Course they’ve been saying to me what what does that mean for the viability of our Council because a lot of council funding as we’ll come on to is spent on the social care system yeah and I I think you know you look at Birmingham one of the issues um

With their uh section 114 was actually kind of not being able to keep up with um Rising wages because I think that’s something we see sort of every year or every year when I was at LGC was covering so the pay settlement would come out which is often done through the

Local government Association um so they set the pay for Council workers and then the Unions would kind of be on their back saying you’re not giving us enough money but that money has to come out of the Council budget I mean obviously I’m not saying people shouldn’t get Fair pay

But I think you know it’s all wrapped up in the same thing isn’t it it’s kind of like how do you solve so many issues issues like housing social care children’s social care um ensuring people in the public sector are paid a fair wage without kind of solving the

Issue of council funding I think it’s such a big question for labor yeah and and I think as we’ve talked about Labor we should probably talk about what the government has sort of agreed to do to try and fix um the situation so there was um some funding announced at the end

Of last year 64 billion pounds worth I mean that sounds like a huge amount of money but it’s not enough is it um and the local government Association came out and said it wasn’t enough and there’d still be a two billion pound funding Gap this year I think Tory MPS

Actually wrote to rishy sunik and asked him for more money because otherwise there would be significant Cuts needed this year um it amounts to a 6.5% increase in funding so less than the 9 99.4% rise they had last year um but why isn’t that enough I mean that figure

Will sound huge to our listeners it is a huge amount of money yeah but um inflation in those specific sectors the um mega mentioned housing and social care adult social care children’s services um is much higher than the national rate of inflation which as we all know has been massive over the last

Few years so social care can take up more than half of most local authorities budgets so if inflation in costs in that sector going up by uh 15 20% um then they’re going to need much more than um the 6% settlement that they’ve got from

This 64 billion so I think the LG said that even with that settlement there’s a 4 and a half billion shortfall um I think sometimes people forget uh how many services local authorities are responsible for that 64 billion has got to deliver a huge huge amount of stuff

Um housing and adult social care as we mentioned but also lots of schools uh transport plans um and underfunding these Services really acts as a bottleneck for a lot of sort of national issues that we’re seeing coming to the FL at the moment so soci care I suppose

Coming back to it being the main one because of the pressures that creates for the NHS nationally if social care isn’t properly funded um then that that creates sort of bottlenecks in beds in hospitals um also issues like planning which is really a hot topic for the

Labor party for both parties at the moment planning departments have been completely decimated so underfunding local government cre creates Boton X in all sorts of areas that I don’t think um is widely appreciated yeah and it’s really interesting isn’t it because I think a lot of our listeners will be

Thinking I thought this was going to be a podcast about councils so why aren’t they talking about bins and fly tipping and libraries and Leisure centers and all of those things you know councils do have um some respon responsibility over but ultimately and this is something

That I was told by the leader of Somerset Council who I went to go and see last week as he was trying to work out what cuts he needed to make for the budget um he was saying actually you know we we are essentially an adult social Care Service being funded by a

Tax um that’s based on property values that were decided in 1991 and he was like who would start with this model you know who this system is not something that you would you would think up um and so do you think there is this sort of

Like do you think it’s sort of more of a Phil philosophical question about what councils are actually for Megan yeah I mean yeah I think I have lots of opinions on this um I think something that is definitely kind of emerged over the past few years as a question of okay

Well what a council kind of actually fall if all they can deliver is social care or housing and even then they are bursting at the scenes trying to deliver it if you’re a counselor so say you’re running for election at the May elections you’ve never been worked in a

Council before you have probably had some experience in local campaigning whatever but you’ve not actually been involved in the council you run on a on a campaign of okay I’m going to really make C Lanes brilliant in my town and then you get in and you look at your

Budget and you think oh but where’s the money going to come from because you know 80% of our budget is going on social care there’s sort of a bit left for for housing rehousing homeless people oh there’s no money for my for my cycle Lanes you know that’s kind of a a

Simplistic example but I think it does beg the question of if people are trying to make actual change in their communities how are they going to do it if if our public services are so hollowed out I think that is a genuine question but one that is quite difficult

To ask yeah yeah and it’s interesting because I mean this brings us on to what the actual real life consequences are for this crisis that councils are in um and we’ve all visited I mean we all live we all live in a council area ourselves but we’ve all visited them in the course

Of our reporting and you can really see it you know in in the state of the Public Public realm you know swings broken in playgrounds that are tied to their posts haven’t been fixed for weeks litter in the streets um when I went to go and visit uh Thor There Was You Know

Overflowing bins the council tax had gone up 10% in April it’s going up by a similar amount again this year people were really sort of struggling with Rising parking costs and anywhere that the council could try and make up a bit of money they were I mean even the cost

Of burials and interments of people’s ashes had gone up you know even the dead weren’t spared this situation in th um similar in Hastings where one of the big issues and we’ve we’ve mentioned housing but this is temporary accommodation councils must provide by law for people who are made homeless the cost of

Housing in Hastings has gone up a lot and there’s there’s a very limited Supply and so there they’re they’re spending a huge proportion of their budget an unsustainable portion on temporary accommodation so much so that the leader of the council they called for a homes for Ukraine style scheme not

For refugees but for locals to be housed in people’s spare rooms and like structures in their Gardens so you can really tell sort of when you’re walking around that areas are suffering and not being maintained in the way that we might remember from you know when when

We were growing up or our parents’ generation might remember yeah absolutely and this doesn’t affect all councils evenly um poorer local Authority areas will feel this a lot more because they have far less ability to make up um the sort of deficits they’ve got because of the cuts um than

Rich local authorities do do so um they’ll have uh far more houses in lower um sort of council tax property banss so they can’t up the council tax by as much or the revenues from council tax can’t be up by as much and also their business rate opportunities are far far fewer um

If you’re in a if you’re if you’re in a council like Blackpool or U NOS Le Kirby your your business rate revenue is going to be very different to say the councils in Westminster or Kensington and London B of Kensington and Chelsea for example so um the the Richer

Councils in the more sort of um Dynamic Metropolitan London Bor councils or perhaps the sort of richer County councils have been able to sort of deal with that Gap a lot more effectively than theor councils and I think the other thing to say is like one of the

One of the things that came out in this poll is basically a sort of universal acceptance that the sort of standard everyday things that you used to think the council will provide like libraries uh swimming pools Leisure centers those are just slowly disappearing um hundreds and hundreds have been closed since

2010 as we’ve mentioned this has been like the hardest hit government Department by austerity when Eric pickles became the dclg department for communities and local government secretary in 2010 George Osborne asked everybody to go away and find cuts um and it was extremely easy for Eric pickles to make Cuts because he just

Basically outsourced them to 317 English councilors and as Megan was saying earlier the councilors are stuck between a rock and a hard place they might be they have loads of great ideas and incredible Manifesto even full of all you know loads of idealistic visions of

What they want to put in a Manifesto but basically what they’ve been reduced to is administering Cuts sort of sent down over the last sort of 10 to 15 years by Eric pickles and all of his successes yeah and it’s easy to do in the sense

That um a lot of the spending that councils do is known as discretionary spending because a lot of that is fundamental stuff isn’t it the discretionary spending like youth clubs and sports facilities and pest control and all of these things that you’d assume councils have to do the somerset

Council leader walked me through the center of taon to show me the bits that he was going to have to cut it was really sad um but you know there was a a bus service um flower beds that would win competitions in the in the park you know these things are important um

Funding for the theater an adult um with learning disabilities employment service um all of these um listed buildings that the council might have to sell off even the museum so it’s it’s it’s things that you assume the council has to be behind actually he was like it’s all

Discretionary we don’t have to spend money on it and in order to save money to spend on things we have to provide legally we are going to have to make Cuts in some of these areas and so I think there’s um again it comes back to the question of what councils are for

But also the way that it you know the way that these cuts are done like you say it was seen as probably quite easy pickings at the beginning of the era of austerity and now it’s very much sort of coming back to bite not just councils but the national government because

We’ve had this run of councils going under in a short space of time it’s looking more like a a national issue rather than the pro a problem of individual councils making bad decisions I think one area where this is really Stark is in public health I mean Public

Health funding um has been cut by 25% since 2015 so I think the person that is really great on this is Michael mmer he basically says we were um the unhealthiest we’ve been this country was going into the pandemic and so much of that was because essential Public Health

Services had been had been cut you know through through austerity and I think that hasn’t reached you know the funding for public health hasn’t reached the levels of before it being cut um and I think like you know we were so unhealthy going into Co and public health services

Are so vital to keeping people healthy and going into a pandemic where you know your health is so vital being in that position position it really showed I think we were you know I don’t think anyone would argue that we weren’t hit really badly by the pandemic and part of

That can be then tied back into the cuts to Local Government funding it really does span into everything in the public sector the other thing that just came to mind is I mean the government are having difficulty now because they’re having to sort of um I I don’t think there’ll be a

Sector wide bail out I think they’ll Carry On Doing sort of ad hoc rescues of councils as and when they sort of issue their bankruptcy or 114 notices but they’re getting to a stage where it’s not just a sort of financial threat to central government but also where central government is unable to

Implement policies that they’ve passed in National legislation so the renters Reform Bill um which is Banning no fault evictions supposedly I’ve spoken to counselors who just say there’s absolutely no way that the provisions in this bill can be enforced by local authorities which they’re meant to be because um housing officers or

Environmental officers as they are and local authorities environmental officers of have just been completely decimated they don’t have the Personnel the expertise or the experience to to to basically implement the legislation that the government’s passing um and we also we already mentioned the impact that social care cuts are having on the NHS

Nationally um and planning dep department but as you say it just it just feeds through into every issue nationally having these um sort of false economies made over over a decade or more oh yeah planning is a really good example of that because you have all of

These promises actually on both sides of how the planning system might be overhauled but then you go to a counselor and they’re like well our planning department is has been decimated so we can’t actually they don’t even have local plans a lot of counil yeah exactly I did an

Investigation for LGC last year sorry plug for I actually um I sent out a lot of fois and found that only one in 10 Council planning departments were fully staffed so I think yeah so it really is that bad um and we we touched on council tax

But can one of you take us through how ridiculous a tax it is please because this is one of the ways that councils can spend money um but as I mentioned in England at least you know it’s based on valuations of properties that were made in 1991 and think of the housing

Inflation that we’ve had since then and it’s a it’s a very regressive tax as well isn’t it yeah I suppose uh reforming the council tax system is is desperately needed um and I think you know several governments have said they’ll do it and pushed it into the

Long grass I remember being at a select committee meeting um that was Michael Gove was in front of the leveling up committee and he said to um to the committee oh yes uh Lee Roy who was at the time the local government Minister now the housing Minister after having

Already been the housing Minister um yeah Lee roley’s looking into it Jeremy Hunt and I have have said Lee you go you take it um anyway Lee roley then got asked several times whether he was doing this council tax review and it was always kind of well I’m coming to it I’m

Coming to it you know so I think um yeah the system itself is is is desperately in need of Reform but it’s it’s so the reforms that need to be done are so big I mean for example I think I saw a a stat and The Economist that kind of said

That um Buckingham Palace pays less council tax over a year than a three bed property in Blackpool basically um so you can see from that it it doesn’t really work does it um but I think you know one thing I would say that 64 billion that we mentioned um kind of

That have been given to councils as part of the financial settlement a lot of that or a part of that is is contingent on councils raising council tax so you know they they’re getting this funding from government some councils actually don’t even get any Revenue support Grant

You know Kingston and London because it was cut so much that that they just don’t get anymore so council tax actually is is vital for councils in terms of raising income but it’s just really not a very effective way to do that because of the way it’s distributed

Across the country and it it just yeah it it’s it just doesn’t work well it’s ironic isn’t it because richy sunak has urged councils for to do restrained tax Rises but then these council tax Rises are factored into that 64 billion and that’s a 5% um council tax rise is it

Which is the highest they can go um because the government caps it but they can ask for permission to go higher in Thor they a referendum yeah or do a referendum it’s a referendum after 3% right and then yes yeah and that they can go up to

4.99 um but in some places the government has granted permission to go higher so in Thor it was 9.99 last year and birmingh have requested if they can go to 20 by 20% of it I think this year wow I mean having issues a section 114

That’s shocking um and I mean just a bring us to an end Megan you’ve been looking at other councils that are potentially in trouble I wondered if you could take us through some of the places that we should keep an eye on yeah so I

Think I have kind of um you can kind of split it into two issues basically it’s either housing is going to cause these councils to tip over the edge or it’s social care so um some key examples I can pick off the top of my head a haing

Council in in London um that housing is a massive issue and and is for a lot of for a lot of London bars temporary accommodation is just ballooned and is so expensive because no longer you having councils housing people in in flats and sort of traditional temporary accommodation more and more families are

Being placed in B&B or hotel accommodation which is so expensive um so haing and then Hastings which you mentioned both have housing issues I mean yeah a kind of an example of how badly this is affecting haing I saw a story this week that said they’re actually considering turning their

Street lights down because they can’t afford to keep them on full Full beam which is great for the women living in haing um but yeah and then obviously Somerset which you mentioned um has got obviously massive problems with social care yeah um another council is Bournemouth Christ Church and pool

Council which is quite an interesting one um for various reasons their main issue is with n d provision so special educational needs provision yeah um and they have had a sort of black hole in their budget in terms of dealing with that because um it’s just so expensive

To uh to run these Services um but another interesting thing about BCP was that they um became a unitary Council uh in 2019 before the pandemic um and as part of that so a unitary council is Created from the merger of of several councils so it covers one area instead of

Having two yeah two or three constituent districts covering an area um BCP went unitary they initially had the unity Alliance who was uh everybody else but the Tories running the council in 2020 the Tories took over and realized that they had um a big gap in the in the council’s transformation program which

Had Arisen out of um the the unitization process that they needed to fill so they thought what are we gonna do and the idea that they had was I don’t know if anyone listening is from Bournemouth but you guys have great Beach huts and some of those Beach Huts belong

To the council the council thought okay we’ll set up a new company that is owned by the council to sell the beach Huts to this new company from the council then the council will buy them back um and this is so classic is yeah yeah yeah so

That was apparently going to raise the amount of money they needed to fill the Gap in their transformation program um Greg Clark who was the leveling up secretary at the time about three leveling up secretaries ago um stepped in and said BCP you cannot do that

Please do not do that that is too risky so yeah they’re on our radar as well but it’s not for the beach Huts reason because they didn’t do that in the end so yeah I love how it was like everything else was fine for 14 years or

Whenever and then the beat charts no we draw a line at that actually the government stepping in um all right well thanks so much both of you um it’s been a really really interesting chat I know all of this is quite technical stuff um but you’ve you’ve talked about it in

Such a in such a um enlightening and accessible way so I really appreciate it and we’ll definitely have you back on to to keep an eye on this situation because surely more councils will be going under this year thanks so much for watching we’d love to know what you think please

Make sure you leave your comments below and if you enjoyed watching this podcast you can watch more of our videos on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to like And subscribe