Information request reveals council has loaned over £170m
TENS of millions of taxpayers’ cash gets loaned out by Kirklees Council to other councils and financial organisations each year, it has emerged.
The scale of inter-council lending first became apparent last month when it was revealed that Thurrock Council in Essex had borrowed more than £1billion from other local councils to finance a high risk solar farm investment.
Kirklees Council was one of many councils to lend Thurrock Council cash. Our story last month claimed Kirklees Council had loaned only £5m, making just £3,992 profit.
Following a Freedom of Information (FOI) enquiry since then, the Examiner can now reveal that Kirklees
Council lent Thurrock Council £45m over the past three years.
It has lent Thurrock either £5m or £10m sums on six occasions, most recently last month.
The loans are all short term, in some cases for as little as three weeks.
Kirklees Council says they are low risk and make taxpayers a small profit.
The FoI reveals that, overall, Kirklees has loaned out more than £173m to a range of councils and building societies in the past five years.
Beneficiaries of Kirklees Council loans between 2016/17 and 2020/21 include:
Coventry Building Society - £8.45m; Redditch Building Society - £3m; Nottingham Building Society - £17.4m; Leeds Building Society - £3m; Wakefield Council - £5m; London Borough of Croydon - £1.2m; London Borough of Ealing - £5m; London Borough of
Barking and Dagenham - £5m; London Borough of Newham - £20m; South Somerset District Council £1.1m; Thurrock Council - £45m total; West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner - £14.2m; Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner £5.5m; Surrey County Council - £30m.
The figures also include £802,000 to SKA Developments, the Huddersfield property firm currently revamping the Co-op Building at the end of New Street in Huddersfield town centre. No maturity date for the loan has been revealed.
A spokesperson for Kirklees Council said: “All councils borrow or lend from each other to manage cashflow - this is standard practice and not something unique to Kirklees.
“Our investments with other councils are always short term - less than two months.”