As Nottingham City Council faces commissioner intervention Nottinghamshire Live has answered some of your pressing questions to help explain the situation and its impact on residents. The Labour-run authority had managed to slash its debt from £1.2 billion to £900 million under the scrutiny of a Government-appointed improvement board, however further intervention is now planned after further financial issues were unearthed.
The Conservative Government had installed an improvement board, chaired by Sir Tony Redmond, following the collapse of Robin Hood Energy so it could monitor and scrutinise the council's progress towards financial and cultural stability. But patience began to wear thin after it was discovered an estimated £40m from the Housing Revenue Account, which must legally be used for the benefit of council house tenants, could have been wrongly spent on general services.
As such tenants had been losing out and their rents had been hiked. The payments, £15m of which deemed unlawful, had been taking place for a period of six years and no one, not even the auditors, had noticed until the end of last year.
