Councils going broke, and the bills you pay for it.
Your council, going broke. 39 needed emergency bailouts this year; council tax rose at double inflation anyway. Plus Brexit promises vs the receipts, and covid contracts a court ruled unlawful. Every figure audited or court-tested.
25 figures, each with its official source.
'Take back control of our borders' was pitched against a net figure around this level (+189k EU, +196k non-EU, −49k British).
Provisional 'in development' statistics, heavily revised (the peak moved from ~906k to ~944k in Nov 2025). Roughly a TRIPLING versus the 2016 baseline, the opposite of what 'control' implied.
Non-EU visas the UK chose to grant: EU migration went negative Free movement ended and EU net migration turned negative (−42k in 2025). The rise came from non-EU work, study and family visas the government itself chose to issue. So: numbers rose DESPITE Brexit, driven by domestic policy, not automatically 'because of' it.
Ruled 'misleading' by the UK Statistics Authority UKSA: the £350m is 'a gross figure' and its use as if net 'is misleading and undermines trust in official statistics.' Chair Sir David Norgrove called it 'a clear misuse of official statistics.'
Measured: gross £20.0bn, £15.5bn after the rebate, £11.0bn net (~£212m/week) after money coming back. The £350m ignored both the rebate and EU receipts.
An ESTIMATE about an unprovable counterfactual, not a measured outcome, and genuinely contested (the IEA rejects it). The OBR assumes Brexit lowers long-run productivity ~4% (full effect ~15 years) and judged it 'broadly on track' in 2024. Do not state as proven fact.
Control won in law, then access handed back to 2038 The UK legally regained sovereignty over access, but the 2021 deal transferred only 25% of EU quota by June 2026, and on 19 May 2025 the government chose to extend EU access until 2038. Control gained, then given away by choice.
The flagship 'Global Britain' deal (CPTPP) is scored at +0.04% of GDP long-run, the UK already had deals with 9 of 11 members. An order of magnitude too small to offset the OBR's assumed drag.
A Section 114 notice is EFFECTIVE, not legal, bankruptcy, councils can't be wound up, but they must stop all non-essential spending. Zero were issued in the 17 years to 2018; then 13 in seven years. A break with decades of stability.
A CONDITIONAL risk, not a forecast that 43% will fail: DfE estimates ~43% of councils may be at risk of a Section 114 when the 'statutory override' hiding SEND deficits ends in March 2026 with no fix.
Up £111 in one year, roughly DOUBLE inflation, for the third year running, and 274 of 384 councils used the maximum rise allowed without a referendum. You pay more while services shrink; the average bill per dwelling is £1,868.
Councils spent an estimated £6.6bn buying commercial property in three years, a 14-fold jump, 38–91% funded by cheap Treasury (PWLB) loans. PAC (2020) said government was 'blind' to the 'extreme risks.'
Up from 30 councils the year before: roughly 1 in 8 English councils can't balance the books without special permission to sell assets or borrow for day-to-day services (the step BEFORE formal bankruptcy). Largest: Shropshire £121m, Croydon £119m, Warrington £92m. Cumulative support since the scheme began exceeds £5bn to 42 councils; the NAO warns it 'often delivers poor value for money' and fixes nothing underlying.
A small Surrey borough amassed ~£1.9bn of debt, roughly 130× its ~£14m annual core spending power, mostly borrowed for town-centre skyscrapers via council-owned companies. Gross debt/exposure, not all confirmed loss.
Borrowed heavily to put £655m into solar farms via a private financier; the assets were later sold at a ~£200m realised loss. The ~£1.5bn is gross exposure/crisis-year gap, not all lost.
The equal-pay liability is a genuine legal obligation from historic sex-discrimination in pay, not 'waste.' The £100m+ Oracle IT overrun and delayed accounts ARE a governance failure. It took a £1.255bn government loan and a 21% council-tax rise.
Up ~£5.4bn in 2024-25 alone. Borrowing is not itself a 'loss', most is serviced, but the scale, and how much went into speculative bets, is the risk.
A HARD finding, not allegation. Firms referred to the high-priority lane by ministers, MPs, peers or officials won contracts ~10× more often: 47 of 493 VIP suppliers (~1 in 10) vs 104 of 14,892 in the ordinary lane (fewer than 1 in 100).
The NAO states five times that 'contracts agreed through the VIP lane totalled £3.8 billion', and found over half the VIP suppliers' PPE was unsuitable for front-line use.
Of £18.0bn in pandemic contracts, £10.5bn was handed out directly with no competitive tender under emergency rules; 55% of larger contracts weren't published on time.
A court found the high-priority lane BREACHED the legal duty of equal treatment, 'unlawful', not merely criticised. (The same judgment held two firms would probably have won anyway, so it's about the process, not every contract.)
Ordered to repay £121,999,219 plus costs after 25m surgical gowns were found non-sterile, referred via the VIP lane after Baroness Mone recommended it. A first-instance order; an appeal is possible.
The programme leaned on ~2,500 consultants; the £6,624 was the highest daily rate disclosed to PAC, the average ~£1,100/day. £6,624 is a maximum, not the norm.
900+ sub-postmasters wrongfully prosecuted on faulty Fujitsu Horizon data, 236 imprisoned; the Inquiry found at least 13 may have taken their own lives. Taxpayer redress has reached ~£1.48bn, heading for ~£2bn.
Kept here for honesty. The viral 'billions in PPE fraud' conflates fraud with an accounting WRITE-DOWN (the ~£8.7bn was stock that lost value or was unusable). Estimated actual fraud was ~£202m: 1.5% of £13.6bn. The real scandals above don't need the exaggeration.