UK Local Authority Financial Resilience During the era of Austerity

This project is part of a wider ongoing international comparative study of local authority financial resilience in response to the financial crisis of 2007 and associated austerity period within the public services.

This element focusses on the responses of local government in the United Kingdom to the austerity era, adopting a longitudinal and mixed methods approach of both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Primarily, the study will analyse and evaluate publically available data on the finances of local authorities over a 15 to 20 year period.

The PhD project would have access to a wider set of comparative data currently being collected through two funded European wide projects, with the PhD student also playing a key role in contributing to these projects.

The specific aims of this project to:
1. Using publically available financial datasets, identify and analyse key financial
variables of local authority financial performance before and after the introduction
of the austerity policy measures
2. Provide comparative analysis of the impact of austerity measures across individual
local authorities by type and location
3. Provide comparative analysis of financial responses to austerity across individual
local authorities by type and location
4. Establish a model to measure the financial resilience of local authorities