Civometry

MHCLG · … · Local authority

Which councils owe the most per resident?

Each council's outstanding borrowing divided by its resident population. Both figures are published; the division is a Civometry calculation. Total borrowing tracks the size of the council; per resident it shows the weight of the debt on the place.

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Source and method

Data
Local authorities borrowing and investments: UK live table (MHCLG) (MHCLG).
Denominator
Mid-year resident population estimate for the same council (ONS for England and Wales, NRS for Scotland, NISRA for Northern Ireland), each area's newest published year. The population year runs behind the borrowing quarter and both periods are named on every figure. Estimates of the population for England and Wales (mid-year), local authority tables.
Coverage
Every UK council with a borrowing figure and a mid-year population estimate. County councils, police, fire, combined authorities and the GLA group borrow separately and are not shown.
Boundaries
ONS Open Geography Portal generalised boundaries, Open Government Licence v3.0.
Basemap
Ordnance Survey Maps API (Light), used under the OS Data Hub terms.
Stale areas
Both sides use the newest period each source publishes for the area. An area missing either side is no data, with the missing side named. Nothing is carried forward and no year is interpolated.
Method
Methodology

What this does not measure

Net indebtedness or financial health: borrowing is not offset against the authority's investments or the assets it bought, and much of it funds housing, regeneration and infrastructure with income attached. The UK figure covers every local government body — county councils, police, fire, combined authorities, national parks and the GLA group — so the council rows shown here do not sum to it.

Gross borrowing at the end of the quarter, summed by Civometry from the component columns of MHCLG's live table because the table publishes no total. It is not a measure of financial health: investments and the assets the borrowing bought are not netted off, and much council borrowing funds housing, regeneration or infrastructure with income attached, so a high figure is not by itself a problem nor a low one a virtue. In two-tier England the county council borrows separately from the districts, and police, fire, combined authorities, national parks and the GLA group borrow separately again — those bodies are in the UK total but have no page here. Every quarter is restated at each release.

Gross borrowing is not a verdict on financial health — much of it funds housing, regeneration and infrastructure with income attached — but per resident it is the comparable measure of how much debt sits on each place.

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