This adds up every emergency bailout a council has been promised since 2020 — the total size of its government lifeline. Why care: one bad year can happen to anyone, but a large running total means the problem is structural, not a blip. If a council has a big number here, it has needed hundreds of millions of pounds of special help to keep services running.
| name | efs_cumulative_amount |
|---|---|
| dataset | 04-efs-s114 |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | £ million |
| grain | council |
| role | feature |
| source | sum of efs_amount_in_year over years per council (data/efs-all-years.csv, `col2` parsed); sum latest revised figures; exclude the 2026-27 table 2 restatement to avoid double-counting Birmingham |
| period | 2020-21 to 2026-27 |
| missingness | Zero for councils never on EFS; totals shift as GOV.UK revises in-principle amounts retroactively — re-fetch before final analysis. |
| score_note | Accumulated scale of support; a sum of efs_amount_in_year with revision risk. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Total EFS agreed in principle for a council across 2020-21 to 2026-27. It measures the accumulated scale of exceptional support the council has needed. Caveats: use the latest revised figure per year, and exclude Birmingham's 2026-27 table 2 amended prior-year profile, which restates rather than adds support.