Source: Exceptional Financial Support awards + section 114 register

Part 1 — Exceptional Financial Support (EFS)

• Publisher: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), on GOV.UK.
• Landing page (collection): https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities
• Per-year guidance pages actually fetched (2026-08-13):
  • https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2020-21 (published 13 Mar 2025)
  • https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2021-22 (published 13 Mar 2025)
  • https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2022-23 (published 23 Feb 2026)
  • https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2023-24 (published 5 Mar 2026)
  • https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2024-25 (published 5 Mar 2026)
  • https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2025-26 (published 20 Feb 2025, last updated 23 Feb 2026)
  • https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2026-27 (published 23 Feb 2026, last updated 30 Jul 2026)

Important: no machine-readable file is published

MHCLG publishes the EFS lists only as HTML tables on the pages above — there is no CSV/ODS/XLSX download. The CSVs in data/ were therefore derived by us: raw pages saved in data/raw-html/efs-<year>.html, tables extracted verbatim (Python html.parser, no reinterpretation) to data/efs-<year>.csv, and stacked into data/efs-all-years.csv. Multiple <br>-separated entries within one cell are joined with " | ". The amount column keeps the original free text (e.g. "£79.6m (support agreed in-principle)", revision notes), so parse amounts downstream with care.

• Granularity: per local authority per financial year (amount of capitalisation/EFS agreed in principle; some rows are HRA support or, in 2025-26, South Yorkshire MCA police functions).
• Coverage: England only. Time period: 2020-21 to 2026-27.
• Cadence: annual list published around February–March alongside the final local government finance settlement; amounts are revised in-place afterwards (e.g. Croydon 2025-26 revised £136.0m → £110.3m). Next edition (2027-28) expected ~Feb–Mar 2027.
• Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0 (stated on each GOV.UK page).

Re-download

for y in 2020-21 2021-22 2022-23 2023-24 2024-25 2025-26 2026-27; do
  curl -sL "https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-$y" \
    -o "data/raw-html/efs-$y.html"
done
# then re-run the table-extraction step (see git history / regenerate with any HTML table parser)

Caveats

• "Agreed in principle" is not the same as support drawn down; some councils withdrew requests (e.g. Bexley 2020-21) — those rows are kept as-is.
• Figures are revised retroactively on the pages; re-fetch before analysis.
• The pages also link per-council capitalisation directions and external assurance reviews (PDFs) — not downloaded here.

Part 2 — Section 114 notices

There is no official government register of section 114 notices. Notices are issued by each council's s151 officer and published on the council's own website; GOV.UK/MHCLG maintains no consolidated list (confirmed by search 2026-08-13). Trackers exist at the House of Commons Library ("Why are local authorities going bankrupt?", https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/why-are-local-authorities-going-bankrupt/) and the Institute for Government (https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-authority-section-114-notices), but these are secondary compilations, not official datasets.

• data/s114-notices-compiled.csv is a hand-compiled list (12 notices, 8 councils, 2018–2023) assembled from the Commons Library page and the issuing councils' own statements (Croydon, Woking, Birmingham pages listed in the CSV). Dates are as widely reported; treat as unofficial. No notices after Nottingham (29 Nov 2023) were identified as of compilation; unconfirmed for 2024–2026 — the EFS regime has largely substituted for new s114s.
• A full authoritative collection would require monitoring each council's website / the Commons Library tracker, or FOI to MHCLG.

Files in data/