By the time the next election is over, will there be anything left?
"England’s town halls are being “forced to the pawnshop” in an unsustainable fire sale of assets aimed at temporarily staving off bankruptcy, councils and experts have warned.
Local authorities are preparing to sell off hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of land and buildings as a long-term funding squeeze shows no sign of being alleviated by the chancellor’s Budget on March 6.
At least 10 councils, including Middlesbrough, Stoke-on-Trent, Somerset, Southampton and Bradford, have applied to the government for “exceptional financial support” to balance this year’s books.
However, they have been told that any such agreement will not come in the form of funding, but instead as permission to borrow and sell off assets to pay for day-to-day services.
Tony Travers, professor in the government department at the London School of Economics, said such an approach to tackling the chronic funding gap was “not normal good government and very bad practice”.
FT.com
"England’s town halls are being “forced to the pawnshop” in an unsustainable fire sale of assets aimed at temporarily staving off bankruptcy, councils and experts have warned.
Local authorities are preparing to sell off hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of land and buildings as a long-term funding squeeze shows no sign of being alleviated by the chancellor’s Budget on March 6.
At least 10 councils, including Middlesbrough, Stoke-on-Trent, Somerset, Southampton and Bradford, have applied to the government for “exceptional financial support” to balance this year’s books.
However, they have been told that any such agreement will not come in the form of funding, but instead as permission to borrow and sell off assets to pay for day-to-day services.
Tony Travers, professor in the government department at the London School of Economics, said such an approach to tackling the chronic funding gap was “not normal good government and very bad practice”.
FT.com
