In June 2016, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report on the Financial sustainability of local authorities: capital expenditure and resourcing, which found councils in England have maintained their overall capital spending levels, but face pressure to meet debt servicing costs and maintain investment levels in their existing asset bases.

The NAO followed this up in July by publishing an interactive data visualisation, which provided the underlying data from the report for each local authority. This article sets out the key findings from the report and the data visualisation relating to the cost of servicing council debt.