A £2bn ‘black hole' in councils' business rate income could exacerbate last week's brutal Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) for local government, as town halls begin to implement a new round of service cuts and slash 100,000 posts.

This week, senior Local Government Association sources said they had not received a full explanation from the Treasury over the significant shortfall in likely national non-domestic rates (NNDR) income for 2014/15 implied by the CSR figures.