A new financial year looms. The government is reportedly in the mood for pre-election tax cuts; the opposition talks of iron fiscal discipline. And all around us, a familiar disaster grinds on: constant increases in demand on our most crucial public services, which the financially blitzed councils charged with providing them simply cannot meet. The result is a story that speaks volumes about Westminster’s state of contorted denial: increasing numbers of our cities, towns and counties now face municipal bankruptcy, but no one in any position of national power and influence seems to want to talk about it.

The dire predicament of councils all over England now invites an obvious question: at what point might we collectively realise that hundreds of local crises now add up to a national catastrophe? Our political culture is too Westminster-focused to follow the stories and join the dots; the dreaded term “local government” still causes eyes to glaze over. But all over the country, the picture is now the same, and things are rapidly nearing the point of complete breakdown.

Up until last year, the handful of councils that had issued section 114 notices – a reference to the part of the Local Government Finance Act of 1988 that covers insolvent local authorities – were mostly mired in stories of financial mismanagement. Then came the fall of Birmingham city council, tipped into bankruptcy late last year by its mishandling of an equal-pay claim and a £100m IT project. By that point, a longstanding fear was becoming inescapable: that whatever the faults and flaws of particular council leaderships, a systemic crisis was about to break. The proof arrived when........

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