Councils · capital risk monitor
Every English council against MHCLG's proposed capital risk metrics Proposed, not final
Four metrics from MHCLG's consultation of May 2026, computed for every English principal authority against the proposed outlier line, with history to 2017/18. How it works Read the guide
The four metrics · Reading the tiles
Where the authority sits · group: · showing
History · the authority, the line, the group median
Authorities above the line
| Authority | Value | ÷ line | Status |
|---|
Metric 3 by quarter · ahead of the annual outturn
Method and data · groups, the line, sources, status
- Groups
- Metrics 1 and 2 compare district councils with each other and every other principal authority (counties, unitaries, metropolitan districts, London boroughs, combined authorities, the GLA) together. Metrics 3 and 4 compare everyone. The consultation also splits metric 1 by whether the authority holds an HRA; that split is applied when the dataset carries HRA CFR (the MHCLG-built feed), and skipped otherwise. "Similar" shows the authority's own class; "Nearby" the 12 nearest principal authorities by distance; the line is always set on the whole comparison group. Fire, police, park and waste authorities are out of scope.
- The line
- Q3 + 2.5 × (Q3 − Q1) of the group's values for the year, with quartiles by linear interpolation. The interquartile range is robust, so a handful of extreme values barely move the line. The consultation proposes this relative method rather than fixed limits.
- Data
- Annual figures are final outturn from the MHCLG revenue and capital returns, £ thousand, as held in the site's local-authority dataset. Quarterly borrowing by lender is from the MHCLG borrowing and investment live tables.
- Exact lines and proxies
- On the MHCLG-built feed the page uses the consultation's exact lines: Total Service Expenditure (RS 699), non-treasury investment income (RS 821), General Fund CFR and statutory MRP. On the sheet feed it falls back to proxies: Net Revenue Expenditure for TSE, total CFR for General Fund CFR, and metric 2 is not computable. Metric 3 uses gross debt from the capital return less PWLB, central government and other councils' loans from the March borrowing return, as the consultation defines it; the quarterly chart uses loans only. The note under the metric title says which applies.
- Source
- Status
- These are the metrics as proposed in the consultation. The government's response and technical guidance had not been published when this page was built. Nothing here is a statement that any authority is, or will be, subject to intervention.
Cite this page: PWLBtoday, Capital risk monitor, retrieved <date>, https://pwlbtoday.org/capital-risk