To think Councils going bust are not all at fault?

[Turmerictolly]

Another council (Birmingham) declaring bankruptcy/severe financial difficulties. Yes, there has been some financial mismanagement but decades of austerity and squeeze from a Tory government haven't helped. I have connections to Birmingham and feel sorry for the sorry state it's in - the streets are filthy and depressing in a lot of areas.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-66715441

Birmingham has a lot of students, what happens to the council tax shortfall?

Yup, central govt have screwed them over by cutting their budgets then expecting them to deliiver ever more on less. They're then the villains when they have to up council tax too.

From the news item you linked to.

The Labour-run council needs to settle a £760m bill for equal pay claims.

I heard that the councils are responsible for the upkeep of the schools and with so many due to crumble in the future I imagine many more councils will be going bankrupt too.

I mean that kind of is their fault then

It worrying how long they got away with underpaying women.

Bloody hell

Well that’ll do it

Why so high

Next will come the voluntary redundancies for senior staff at a huge markup. And then the compulsory ones that will largely target women.

My understanding is also that councils have to cut all non-statutory services before they can access any emergency funding from the government. Yet they get the blame for this.

The IT system which should have cost 20 million now estimated 100 million probably has a lot to do with it as well.I live in Liverpool where the council are currently overseen by a commissioner. Most of the issues are cause by awful awful decisions made by the council

What a shame they didn’t save some of the money they weren’t paying to women to kept the council financially afloat then.

They chose to treat females differently and now they are facing the consequences.

Should try not discriminating against women for years then

I'm guessing because they underpaid thousands of women over many many years.

They had enough money to run a Pride event this year- pretty irresponsible months before they went bust

Actually it's usually mismanagement of funds by councils. Birmingham is equal pay, others are bad financial investments, or building numerous high rise flats which no-one wanted and they can't now sell, Woking. Woking even managed to invest in another councils development and that council went bankrupt. Wtf.

Also vanity projects, woke projects, anything that isn't actually delivering services.

Ah, but that would have been an important Key Performance Indicator for a senior manager's appraisal targets for evidencing another payrise. They always go through, even when their female staff are dependent upon benefits to keep going, the tenants are left with homes falling apart at the seams, and the schools are left to do pretty much the same.

It won't be the last council to go bust, the social care is one massive factor, councils are cutting care to the bone

Probably yes, then they can’t blame other people for their own mistakes, as said in the op

And they backdated it when they didn’t need to. Other councils have also paid out but didn’t backdate the claims. Hence they haven’t gone bust. Birmingham council is clearly run by people who have no clue.

It's not central govt's fault Birmingham City Council chose to pay women less than men for a long period of time. The cost of this is the original £1bn they have already paid, the latest liability estimated at £0.75bn plus legal costs of the case and appeals the council made.

If they had paid women correctly in the first place they would have found it much easier to balance the books.

How long was it?

It should be backdated if that's what's fair to the women

As a Council Worker for Birmingham City Council thank you for not putting the blame on low paid woman workers who have been under valued and paid for years, this move by the council is basically them not wanting to pay these equal pay claims, by declaring bankruptcy it means that they will get away with paying what they owe while those in charge carry on getting their overblown salaries, it will be interesting to see if any of them do get sacked for this.

Oh and then there is Thurrock council who got too cocky with their investments and put all their eggs in one basket, losing most of it in a swindle.

There is no denying cuts to funding from central govt have impacted councils but the ones going bankrupt are the reckless ones.