There is always a chance it passed you by, but this Wednesday was D-day for local authority housing finance bods.
The D in this case stands for determination, because Wednesday was the day that 171 English councils finally received the letters telling them how much they owe the Treasury – or in a few lucky cases, how much the Treasury owes them – in exchange for taking control of their housing revenue.
The postman didn’t bring any surprises for council treasurers, given that the settlement figures were more or less identical to those outlined by DCLG back in November.
While councils are pretty happy with the deal they’ve struck – ‘short-term pain for long-term gain’ is how one described it to me – there could still be a sting in the tail.
Because the thing about debt is, of course, that you have to pay the bugger off at some point. To do that, they will have to borrow from the Public Works Loans Board – the government-backed public sector lender.
And, like those sofa pushers to the jilted generation DFS, the PWLB seems to be in the throes of a never-ending sale, whereby debt is priced significantly cheaper than on the open market.
But, that pricing only equates to the amount that the PWLB chucks on top of the underlying interest rate – something that is not guaranteed always to be so low. And the Treasury, in its infinite wisdom, has deemed that all local authority borrowing authority must be done on one day - 26 March.
Councils are, as is their wont, a wee bit concerned about suddenly seeing interest rates shoot through the roof immediately before they have to take on the debt and have called on the Treasury to safeguard them against any turbulence. The risk, they say, is small but the consequences could be serious.
All indications from the Treasury are that no such safeguards will be put in place, however much wailing and gnashing of teeth goes on between now and March. Whatever the ultimate rate, councils will still get a pretty good deal, they say. And they will, but long-term business plans need a degree of certainty when it comes to interest payments that go beyond ‘a pretty good deal’. No certainty means no forward planning.
Whether the Treasury’s decision is purely designed to inject a degree of excitement into what many might see as a rather dry (if hugely important) topic, no one knows.
Whatever the reasoning, the days leading up to the 26th are going to be, in Sir Alex Ferguson’s immortal words, ‘squeaky bum time’ for councils. My advice – wear a clean pair.
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