The huge scale of the financial challenge facing our two local councils has been revealed with figures showing they are more than £250million in debt.
Latest figures from the Govt show East Sussex County Council owes £200,141,000 while Wealden District Council is £53,612,000 in the red.
But they are not alone – councils up and down the country are being forced to borrow more following cuts in Govt grants since 2010. Only 32 councils are without debt and across the country the total owed by councils is £122billion. In some parts of the country authorities are selling off assets like schools and care homes, in order to make ends meet.
Figures from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, show that across the whole of East Sussex the six main local authorities owe more than £597m at the end of the 2024/25 financial year.
Eastbourne Borough Council (EBC) held debts of almost £183million. Meanwhile, Hastings Borough Council (HBC) had debts of about £64m, Lewes District Council (LDC) about £57m, Rother District Council (RDC) close to £29m and Wealden District Council (WDC) almost £53m.
But these debt levels were significantly lower than some found elsewhere in the UK – more than 20 councils had debts of more than £1bn.
Chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU), Dr Jonathan Carr-West, said “public value” would continue to be eroded until the government came up with a long-term solution to council debt. The Govt has admitted the funding system for councils is “broken” and said it was pushing ahead with reforms to address the problem.
Dr Carr-West added: “I think it’s worth, as always, reminding ourselves why councils are in that position. There were a series of decisions taken in the years after 2010 that meant the government grant to councils reduced very dramatically and councils were encouraged to use their own resources, their own ingenuity, to be part of the local economy and to raise money themselves.
“That led to a lot of councils borrowing money, mainly from the Public Works Loans in order to invest in commercial property in new developments. And councils took on quite a lot of debt to do that. For many of these councils, that has been a success.”
He said it would be a mistake to see this as being about some councils that had “gone rogue and gone off to borrow loads of money”. With about 400 councils across the country in debt it was a very consistent pattern.
The issue, said was not so much the debt but the bigger picture. “For me, the key question we need to look at is not necessarily the council’s overall level of debt, but its ability to pay back that debt and how that compares to the level of revenue those assets are bringing in.
East Sussex County Council said it had reduced its debts by £5m in the past year in line with its treasury management strategy, which seeks to reduce debt levels where possible. Wealden District Council said its additional borrowing was to fund housing development.