This is the broadest warning light: has this council ever either declared effective bankruptcy or needed an emergency government bailout? Why care: it captures every council whose finances have officially failed in some way, however that failure was handled. If a council has this flag, at some point it formally could not pay for the services it is required to provide.
| name | formal_distress_flag |
|---|---|
| dataset | 04-efs-s114 |
| kind | constructed |
| type | boolean |
| unit | boolean |
| grain | council |
| role | outcome |
| source | formula: efs_ever OR s114_issued; inputs: efs_ever, s114_issued (this dataset) |
| period | 2018-2026 union of the two components' windows |
| missingness | unknown for the s114 component — it comes from the unofficial hand-compiled list, and absence of an s114 record is not evidence of absence, so a false flag is weak evidence of health. |
| score_note | Broadest binary distress outcome; s114 half inherits unofficial-list false negatives. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
The union of the two formal/reported distress signals: any EFS appearance or any s114 notice. It is the broadest binary marker that a council's finances have officially broken down. Caveat: the s114 half rests on an unofficial hand-compiled 2018-2023 list, so false negatives are possible, particularly after November 2023.