A Secure System For Councils To Bank On

摘要

Until recently, little attention had been paid to the nature or potential of local authority financial reserves. For several decades, the banking sector provided adequate deposit facilities with the necessary flexibility sought by local councils in England, which had been content to trust their holdings in the hands of a financial services industry which - with the exception of the BCCI debacle in the 1990s - offered relatively-strong protection. However, the financial services hegemony was severely shaken in 2008, when the Icelandic banking system froze an estimated ￡1bn of holdings from companies, authorities, charities and other public bodies across the UK. We should not underestimate the policy and political ramifications that have flown as a consequence of this predicament, particularly when one ruminates on recent developments at Local Government House.