Council Tax: What could bankruptcy mean for our bills?
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nottingham City Council is the latest to declare itself bankrupt and has already approved huge cuts. Today, councillors in Birmingham consider whether to do the same.
On this edition of the Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson is joined from Birmingham by Midlands correspondent Becky Cotterill and local campaigner Shuranjeet Singh to look at what's gone wrong in the city and how it's affecting residents.
Plus, Jessica Studdert from the thinktank New Local discusses why so many councils are struggling with their finances.
Senior podcast producer: Annie Joyce
Assistant producer: Iona Brunker
Interviews producer: Melissa Tutesigensi-Charles
Promotion Producer: David Chipakupaku
Editor: Wendy Parker
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For unlimited all-day travel in London, think TFL. With the daily cap fair frozen until March |
| 0:06.2 | 2027, travel as much as you like on tube, bus, Elizabeth line, DLR and overground, knowing you'll |
| 0:14.1 | never pay any more than £8.0.0.0.0. Download TFL Go to plan your journey. |
| 0:24.0 | To the Mayor of London and TFL, every journey matters. |
| 0:27.6 | Always use the same card of device when touching in and out for full terms and conditions, |
| 0:29.0 | such TFL fare capping. |
| 0:33.7 | You know, when Helen used to get home from work, I'd ask, how are you? |
| 0:35.6 | Fine, she'd say. |
| 0:37.1 | She clearly wasn't. After 10 years in IT, she was on autopilot. Then she found |
| 0:42.3 | this job, training up-and-coming tech wizas at the college, same skills but with new people, new challenges. |
| 0:49.8 | Now when she gets back, I get the full debrief. Can't get a word in. |
| 0:55.0 | Give your skills new life. |
| 0:56.6 | Train others. |
| 0:57.7 | Search jobs in further education. |
| 1:00.1 | Politicians spending more money than they actually have. |
| 1:03.8 | Stop me if you've heard this one before. |
| 1:06.4 | Certainly, financial mismanagement is a tale as old as the tradition of putting an X in a box on polling day. |
| 1:12.6 | But when it comes to local government, well, there are alarming indications that the problems are endemic. |
| 1:17.6 | Birmingham City Council is just the latest local authority to issue a Section 114 order, |
| 1:24.6 | essentially to cry bankruptcy and to point to a shortfall in funding of hundreds of millions. |
| 1:31.0 | Research shows that almost one in ten councils in England fear they will have to do similarly in the next year. |
| 1:38.5 | Councillors are meeting in Birmingham as we record this podcast to vote on huge cuts to services and an increase in council tax. |
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