This records the year a council first needed an emergency government bailout. Why care: the earlier the date, the longer the council has been in trouble — and long-running problems are harder to fix. If a council's first year is several years back and it is still on the list, its finances have been broken for a long time.
| name | efs_first_year |
|---|---|
| dataset | 04-efs-s114 |
| kind | extracted |
| type | categorical (financial year) |
| unit | financial year |
| grain | council |
| role | feature |
| source | data/efs-all-years.csv: min `year` per council (`col1`) |
| period | 2020-21 to 2026-27 |
| missingness | Undefined for councils never on EFS; the EFS regime only starts in 2020-21, so earlier distress is invisible here. |
| score_note | Clean timing marker but blind to pre-2020 distress and derivable from the award rows. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
The first financial year in which a council received (or requested) EFS — when its distress first became official under this regime. Earlier first years imply longer-running problems. Caveat: the series starts in 2020-21, so councils in distress before then (e.g. via s114) show a later or absent first year.