t’s the third consecutive year Stoke-on-Trent City Council has needed Exceptional Financial Support to balance its books, with £10.5 million approved for 2026/27. While still a significant sum, it asked for £16.8 million last year and £42.2 million in 2024.
The council also secured an additional £13.3 million over three years following adjustments to the national funding formula, with council Leader Jane Ashworth stating the adjustment reflected the levels of deprivation in the city and the challenges in areas like children’s social care, with one of the highest proportions of looked-after children in the country, and a shortage of local authority foster carers.
High demand for statutory services like social care has been compounded by inflation and historical funding shortfalls. Nevertheless, the opposition has criticised the repeated reliance on debt, with the leader of the Conservatives, Lorraine Beardmore, labelling Stoke “a payday loan council” that is building up unsustainable liabilities. Reform UK group leader Dan Jellyman, meanwhile, has argued that social care services should focus on investment in early intervention and community family support rather than crisis-driven acute interventions.
Adding to the scrutiny, separate figures revealed that the council still has more than £31 million in unspent Levelling Up funds from a separate £56 million regeneration grant originally awarded in 2021. While the council clarified that this money is legally ring fenced for specified capital projects such as town centre improvements and cannot be used to fix the everyday budget deficit, Beardmore and Jellyman have hit back at the slow pace of delivering those major regeneration plans.
High demand, but a limited tax base
Phil Catney, senior politics lecturer at Keele University, says Stoke’s financial problems are not simply the result of poor council management but reflect a deeper, structural problem with the way local government is funded, particularly in deprived areas with high social-care and children’s-service costs. He also points out that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is not alone in needing extra financial help from central government, with Bradford, Nottingham and Southampton councils to name a few.
“Many local authorities similar to Stoke-on-Trent have significant challenges in meeting their budgetary expectations, and this has been a problem now for going on 15 years, where the council’s budgets consistently do not balance.
“The government's got a problem, because it requires local authorities to balance their budgets and they've got big challenges in meeting those with social care and other costs that are soaring. Some areas have an ageing population. Some areas have an area with child protection problems. We have both,” he added.
With Stoke being a relatively low-cost place to live, the amount of cash the council is bringing in from council tax is modest compared to other more prosperous areas. “We’re a relatively economically deprived area that doesn’t have a tax base that can cover the challenges that we have. Apart from Trentham, you don't have very large middle-class areas that are generating a lot of taxation. If you run a council in a relatively leafy area, you're going to attract people with more money and you're not going to have as many people potentially come to your area for migration.”
