Worcestershire County Council, led by the Reform party, is set to impose England’s largest council tax increase this April after ministers granted it special permission to raise rates by up to 9%. This places the local authority among a handful, including Shropshire and North Somerset also permitted 9% rises, allowed to breach the standard 5% cap.
The decision is politically sensitive for Reform UK, which has prioritised low council tax, and has already prompted one local Reform councillor to quit the party in protest. The council’s leadership has admitted its finances are “a mess”, blaming previous Tory mismanagement, and has applied for permission to borrow £71m from April to avoid effective bankruptcy.
Send debt clearance announced
Separately, the government has announced it will clear about £5bn of historical debts accumulated by English councils from overspending on special educational needs and disability (Send) services. Ministers stated the sum would cover 90% of each local authority’s Send debt accrued by this April, a measure council leaders had warned was needed to prevent 90% of councils facing effective bankruptcy by 2028.
This debt write-off will be conditional on authorities agreeing to implement Send updates in line with forthcoming government plans. However, councils with high overspends, such as Hampshire County Council, will remain with tens of millions in debt, and the total accumulated Send debt across England is expected to be £6bn by April. Ministers said future overspends between 2026 and 2028 would be handled with an “appropriate and proportionate” though not unlimited approach.
Louise Gittins, chair of the Local Government Association, said the partial write-off removed the immediate insolvency threat for many councils, calling it recognition of a “broken system”. She stressed that fully writing off historic and future deficits remained critical.
Additional grants and wider council rises
An extra £440m in recovery grants for councils in economically deprived areas was also unveiled, a move the government said aimed to address criticism that such areas lost out under a new funding formula. Sir Stephen Houghton, chair of the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities, welcomed this targeted money for areas with significant deprivation.
The government stated that the councils permitted above-cap rises, which also include Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Warrington, Trafford, and Windsor and Maidenhead, had historically low rates and the increases would bring household bills to average levels.
In a Commons statement, Local Government Minister Alison McGovern said the finance settlement showed the government was delivering improvements to make councils “agents of renewal”. Meanwhile, in a related development, attempts by Reform-led Warwickshire County Council to implement a lower 3.89% council tax rise failed last week after opposition parties argued it would risk service cuts and council viability.
