Figures published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, have laid out how much major councils all over the country owed to lenders in 2023/24 and 2024/25.
The total for West Sussex stood at more than £1.12billion at the end of March. Some 19 per cent of that is owed by Worthing, increasing from £198,686,000 to £215,365,000 by the end of 2024/25.
The figures for Adur District Council rose from £169,127,000 in 2023/24 to £183,832,000 at the end of 2024/25.
The debt is not borne by council taxpayers but if every person in Worthing decided to chip in and pay it off, it would cost £1,918 per person. In Adur it would cost £2,841 per person. The average debt per person in England is £1,668.
Read more: Councils in East Sussex hold debts of almost £600 million
A spokesman for Worthing Borough Council said the high level of borrowing was due largely to the “significant financial challenge of supporting an increasing number of our residents struggling with housing and the cost of living”.
It is a situation shared by Crawley Borough Council – the only second tier council in the county to have a higher debt than Worthing. Crawley had debts of £224,325,000 by the end of 2024/25.
The spokesman added: “That increase in debt allowed us to invest in 2024/25 in vital services, such as replacement vehicles for our waste and recycling teams, building new homes for Worthing residents who would otherwise be homeless, maintaining and improving our car parks and saving Worthing Pier from collapse after it suffered storm damage.”
As for Adur, the council said: “Roughly a third of our debt relates to what is effectively a mortgage on each of our Adur Homes properties. This works out as an average mortgage of around £29,000 per property, which is a very low amount of debt. In comparison, the average new UK mortgage taken out by home-buyers in the first three months of 2025 was for around £225,000.
“During 2024/25 we invested more than £10m in improving our Adur Homes properties. We also spent more than £2m refurbishing empty properties for local families to move into and built a dozen new homes for Adur residents in need of somewhere to live.”
Both councils made the decision to take on debt because of “many years of inadequate central government funding”.
The spokesman added: “We look forward to the results of the government’s recent consultation on fair funding which we hope will better support the services our residents need.”
Nationwide, the Shared Data Unit found more than half of UK councils increased their borrowing levels, resulting in a £7.8bn ( seven per cent) increase to debt levels in 2024/25.
Experts including Jonathan Carr-West of the Local Government Information Unit said the spiralling levels of debt at local authorities was “extremely worrying”.
He added: “That is not a sustainable system. As one local government finance officer said to me, it’s essentially pay-day loans for local governments.
“I don’t think the government would say that’s its long-term ambition. They would say that is what we have had to do to paper over the cracks while we introduce a new funding system for local government.”
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