What has happened?
Labour-run Birmingham City Council, which is the largest city council in Europe, serving more than a million people, has said it can no longer balance its budgets and is in effect broke. Councils are not actually allowed to go “bankrupt”, and cannot go into liquidation. Instead, having run out of money to meet future commitments, it has issued a “section 114” notice – essentially a cry for help from central government. The council, responsible for spending £3.2bn a year on everything from rubbish collections to schools, street cleaning and adult social care, now
