Data and method

Sources

All of these sources are published as open data. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Town names are set in Roboto (SIL Open Font License).

Definitions

Total debt

All outstanding borrowing at the date: Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) loans, bank loans, loans from other councils, bonds and other loans, short and long term, as reported in the borrowing table.

Debt per person

Total debt divided by the area's population (ONS estimate for the mid-year before the date).

Net debt

Total debt minus investments (deposits, money market funds, gilts, loans to other councils and others). Below zero means the council holds more investments than debt.

Change

Percentage change in total debt since the same date a year earlier.

Debt to budget

Total debt divided by the council's net revenue spending for the financial year: how many years of day-to-day spending the debt equals. England: net current expenditure; Wales and Scotland: net revenue expenditure. Quarters use the last financial year published.

Debt cost

What the debt costs each year: external interest plus the yearly repayment of principal (minimum revenue provision in England and Wales, statutory repayment of debt in Scotland), divided by population.

Population

ONS mid-year estimate for the year before the date.

GDP per person

Gross domestic product at current market prices of the council's area in the calendar year before the date, divided by population. A county's GDP is the sum of the districts inside it; a city region's is the sum of its councils.

Capital spending

Spending on buildings, land, roads, equipment and vehicles, plus capital loans and grants to others (for example a council's own companies), by service. "Borrowed" is new borrowing and credit used to finance that year's capital spending.

Red marker

In that financial year (April to March) the council issued a section 114 notice (its chief finance officer stopped all new spending except on legal duties) or received Exceptional Financial Support (government permission to borrow or sell assets to pay for day-to-day costs and balance its budget).

How the figures are combined

• Two tiers of councils. Much of England has a county council and a district council for the same place, each with its own debt. The map shows them on separate layers and never adds them together. Unitary authorities, metropolitan boroughs, London boroughs and councils in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do both jobs and appear on both layers. Fire, police, combined authorities and Greater London Authority bodies borrow too; they have pages but are not on the map.
• City regions. Ten large cities made only of single-tier councils (Greater London, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West of England, Tees Valley, Greater Glasgow). Their councils' debts are added up; nothing is counted twice. London's Greater London Authority group borrows separately: its debt is shown next to London's total but not added to it.
• Councils that merged. Councils were reorganised several times since 2009 (Northern Ireland 2015; Dorset, Bournemouth and Suffolk 2019; Buckinghamshire 2020; Northamptonshire 2021; Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset 2023). The map draws the councils that existed at each date, using the boundaries of that time.
• Matching sources. Councils are matched across sources by their official ONS codes, including codes that changed over time; where a source has names only (Scotland, Wales), by normalised council names.
• Colours. For each measure the colour bands are fixed across all dates, so moving the slider shows real change rather than a re-scaled map.
• Updates. The site is rebuilt automatically when a source publishes new figures: the borrowing table every quarter, the other sources once a year.

Limitations

• Boundaries of the 26 Northern Ireland councils before April 2015 are not available to us, so Northern Ireland is grey on the map before 2016; their figures are still on their pages.
• ONS no longer publishes population for most abolished councils after 2010. For those councils the population is estimated from their share of the successor council's population in the last year both were published (marked with *).
• Debt to budget and debt cost are not available for Northern Ireland, for Scotland before 2016-17 (spending) or 2020-21 (debt cost), or for England before 2017-18. Capital spending is not yet available for Scotland and Northern Ireland. GDP is not available for councils abolished before 2023.
• The debt figures are those reported by councils to MHCLG. Scottish councils also report PFI and lease liabilities as debt in their own statistics; this site uses the UK borrowing table only, so all councils are measured the same way.
• Commercial property income is not shown: the official returns report it in a memorandum section that many councils leave at zero.
• The Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man) are not part of the United Kingdom and have no councils in these statistics; they are not shown.

Corrections

If you find a figure that does not match its source, please tell us which council, which date and which source, and we will check and correct it.