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London: Britain\u2019s second-largest city Birmingham\u2019s local authorities said that it is shifting focus on maintaining vital services as the council is effectively bankrupt due to an annual budgetary shortfall of millions of pounds. Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe comprising over 100 councillors, issued a Section 114 notice to say that all new expenditures with the exception of protecting vulnerable people and statutory services will be stopped immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n The council said that the dire financial situation arose as it must fund an \u201cequal pay liability\u201d but it does not have the resources to do so.<\/p>\n \u201cOn that basis, the Council\u2019s Interim Director of Finance, Fiona Greenway, has issued a report under section 114(3) of the Local Government Act, which confirms that the Council has insufficient resources to meet the equal pay expenditure and currently does not have any other means of meeting this liability,\u201d the council statement read.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Council will tighten the spend controls already in place and put them in the hands of the Section 151 Officer to ensure there is complete grip. The notice means all new spending, with the exception of protecting vulnerable people and statutory services, must stop immediately,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n The UK government\u2019s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) said that it had been \u201cengaging regularly\u201d with the council in recent months over the \u201cpressures it faces\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have requested written assurances from the leader of the council that any decision regarding the council\u2019s issues over equal pay represents the best value for taxpayers\u2019 money,\u201d DLUHC said.<\/p>\n Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands region which covers Birmingham, said the news was \u201cdeeply disturbing\u201d for residents.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is no secret that local authorities up and down the country have faced significant cuts over the past decade \u2013 even if the funding from government has been improving in recent years \u2013 and it has been a real challenge to keep services running to the standard that people expect,\u201d Andy Street said, adding, \u201cHowever, the huge majority of councils of all political colours are managing to achieve this, with bankruptcy extremely rare.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n [ad_2] [ad_1] London: Britain\u2019s second-largest city Birmingham\u2019s local authorities said that it is shifting focus on maintaining vital services as the council is effectively bankrupt due to an annual budgetary shortfall of millions of pounds. Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe comprising over 100 councillors, issued a Section 114 notice to say that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-world"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7401,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399\/revisions\/7401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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