This counts how many separate years a council has needed an emergency government bailout. Why care: one year of help might be a one-off shock; several years means the council's finances are chronically broken. If a council has a high count, it has been unable to pay its own way year after year.
| name | efs_years_count |
|---|---|
| dataset | 04-efs-s114 |
| kind | extracted |
| type | integer |
| unit | count (0-7) |
| grain | council |
| role | feature |
| source | data/efs-all-years.csv: count of distinct `year` values per `col1` council |
| period | 2020-21 to 2026-27 |
| missingness | Zero means no EFS appearance in the published lists; counting depends on correct exclusion of header rows and the non-per-council 2026-27 table 2. |
| score_note | Strong chronic-distress signal but a direct derivative of efs_awarded_in_year. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
The number of financial years (out of seven, 2020-21 to 2026-27) in which a council appears on the EFS lists. Repeat appearances signal chronic rather than one-off distress. Caveat: counts can be inflated by withdrawn/conditional rows unless those are handled explicitly.