Slough Borough Council has less than a year to pay £266m in loans

The authority effectively declared bankruptcy in May 2021

A financially struggling council has less than a year to pay back £266m it has borrowed from multiple local authorities.

Slough Borough Council (SBC) has until September 2023 to repay the money.

The council borrowed the money short-term at a time of cheap interest rates in order to buy assets.

But historic accounting errors meant SBC, which has a total borrowing debt of £760m, could not afford to meet the payments.

It has been selling up to £600m worth of its property and land to pay back its debtors and has so far accumulated £162m from the sales, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

In July 2021, the council effectively declared bankruptcy, resulting in the mass-asset sales and savings targets of £20m a year for the next seven years.

Then in October last year, the government announced it would intervene in the "dysfunctional" council after two reports revealed a catalogue of failings that included the rising debts.

Steven Mair, SBC's chief finance officer, told a council overview and scrutiny meeting if it could sell £300m worth of assets it would be able to repay all of its short-term loans.

"We can now repay all of the loans up to March of next year and we have to sell more next year to repay next year's loans," he said.

But he warned if SBC did not start selling assets or generate £100m in sales next year, the council's interest rates could quadruple by "many, many, many millions of pounds" that it has "no budget for".