A section 114 notice (s114) is often associated with a sign of a council's imminent financial collapse, as we have seen with various local authority cases. But this is not always the case.

At Northumberland CC, a s114 was recently issued for illegal expenditure through the setting up of an internal consultancy that was not registered as a trading company, yet still its profits and expenses appeared on the council's accounts. This breached the Localism Act.