Cost-of-living crisis for councils will make levelling up a distant dream

Analysis: after cash injections during Covid, local councils now face a world of precarity and pain

It was only a year ago that the national spending watchdog was praising the government for injecting billions into council budgets in England to help them cope with Covid-19. Ministers are never happy to splash the cash, but without it, the National Audit Office said, local government would have collapsed.

We are now in, if not quite system-failure territory, then at least a world of mass municipal precarity and pain. Rampaging inflation, fuelled by soaring energy and fuel costs, have left councils with their own cost of living crisis, and a budget hole of almost 2bn. Once again, they are asking ministers for financial help.