This compares the council's total debt with the amount it spends running services in a year — like comparing a household's mortgage to its annual income. It matters because the same debt is far more dangerous for a small council than a big one. A high number means the council owes several times what it spends in a year, so debt costs weigh heavily; a low number means the debt is comfortably small relative to its size.
| Council | Class | Value | In its class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woking | district | 65.75 | 1st worst of 163 |
| Runnymede | district | 25.03 | 2nd worst of 163 |
| Eastleigh | district | 19.64 | 3rd worst of 163 |
| Spelthorne | district | 19.29 | 4th worst of 163 |
| Brentwood | district | 11.87 | 5th worst of 163 |
| Basildon | district | 10.8 | 6th worst of 163 |
| Harlow | district | 10.73 | 7th worst of 163 |
| Uttlesford | district | 10.51 | 8th worst of 163 |
| Stevenage | district | 10.41 | 9th worst of 163 |
| Guildford | district | 10.18 | 10th worst of 163 |
| Council | Class | Value | In its class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chichester | district | -0.03 | 1st best of 163 |
| North Hertfordshire | district | -0.01 | 2nd best of 163 |
| Erewash | district | -0 | 3rd best of 163 |
| Forest of Dean | district | 0 | 8th best of 163 |
| Tonbridge & Malling | district | 0 | 8th best of 163 |
| Malvern Hills | district | 0 | 8th best of 163 |
| Vale of White Horse | district | 0 | 8th best of 163 |
| South Oxfordshire | district | 0 | 8th best of 163 |
| Cotswold | district | 0.01 | 9th best of 163 |
| Basingstoke & Deane | district | 0.02 | 10th best of 163 |
| name | debt_to_core_spend |
|---|---|
| dataset | 02-capital-outturn-debt |
| kind | constructed |
| type | numeric |
| unit | ratio (£/£) |
| grain | council-year |
| role | feature |
| source | cfr_end / core_spend — PRU1_prucfrend_amt (this dataset) divided by RS_netcurrtot_net_exp from 01-revenue-outturn/data/Revenue_Outturn_time_series_data_v3.2.csv; join on ONS_code/year |
| period | 2018-19 to 2024-25 |
| missingness | unknown |
| calculated | ../calculated/debt-to-core-spend.csv |
| calculated_rows | 2331 |
| calculated_periods | 2018-19 to 2024-25 |
| calculated_date | 2026-08-13 |
| score_note | Strong Woking-style leverage flag; slight overlap with gross_borrowing_to_core_spend. |
| peer_group | districts (n=204), unitaries (n=65), metropolitan boroughs (n=36), London boroughs (n=33), counties (n=27) — scored within each class against its median/IQR |
Debt burden per pound of core (net current service) spend — the Woking-style leverage flag. Values several times core spend signal commercial-investment exposure well beyond what services could plausibly sustain. Core spend is used as the normalizer because no verified per-resident population series exists in datasets 01–12; reorganisations (new unitaries) break comparability across years.