This is the most serious warning a council can give: its own finance officer has formally declared it cannot balance its budget — the local-government equivalent of going bankrupt. Why care: when this happens, all new spending stops and government usually steps in to take control. If a council has this flag, its finances have completely failed at least once.
| name | s114_issued |
|---|---|
| dataset | 04-efs-s114 |
| kind | extracted |
| type | boolean |
| unit | boolean |
| grain | council |
| role | feature |
| source | data/s114-notices-compiled.csv: council appears in `council` column |
| period | 2018-02-02 to 2023-11-29 (coverage after Nov 2023 unconfirmed) |
| missingness | unknown — the file is hand-compiled and unofficial (no government register exists); absence of an s114 record is NOT evidence of absence, especially for 2024-2026. |
| score_note | Hardest distress signal there is, but rests on the weak hand-compiled unofficial list. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Whether the council's s151 officer has issued a section 114 notice — a declaration that the budget cannot be balanced, effective bankruptcy. It is the hardest formal distress signal a council can emit. Caveat: the list is hand-compiled and unofficial (10 notices, 8 councils); treat as indicative, not authoritative, and never treat absence as a clean bill of health.