AS A RESIDENT

When Central and Local Government are not acting in the interest of citizens, we must call them to account and demand change. Debt Resistance UK can facilitate citizen-led local action by providing information and tools for those who want to challenge their Council’s financial decision.

Councils have a duty to conduct their affairs in the best interest of residents ensuring best value from public spending. As a resident, you have significant powers to ensure councils are held to account for the financial decision they make on your behalf.

Click on the titles below to find out how you can take action.

1. Request a public interest report

As a local resident you have the right to object to items in the Council accounts (like LOBO loans) and ask for an external auditor to make a report in the public interest.

There is a limited time during the summer when this can be done.

You can find out more here.

2. Request a high court declaration

As a local resident you have the right to request that some items in the Council accounts (like LOBO loans) are declared unlawful through a declaration by the High Courts.

There is a limited time during the summer when this can be done.

You can find out more here.

3. Investigate your Council's LOBO loans

Debt Resistance UK has sent Freedom of Information requests to more then 200 Councils suspected to have LOBO loans.  Most of the findings are published on this site. Check here if your Council is one of them.

Debt Resistance UK alone cannot investigate in detail each Council. Instead we would like to support local residents in furthering their own investigations.

If you are interested in pursuing this, do get in touch. We would be happy to share with you  any extra information we have on your council, help you understand the material we already have, suggest streams of investigation and provide any support in using the tools we have used up to now:

  • Freedom of information request (FOI) : citizens have the right to request specific information from public bodies who are obliged to reply within a specific time frame.
  • Open books: there is a limited period of time during the summer when any interested person can inspect the Council’s accounts and all documents related to them. This is a very useful as you can inspect document that are hard to obtain via FOI. You can find more information on how to inspect your Council’s accounts here.

Do also send us any of your findings so we can share it on this website and/or write a blog post for us to publish. 

4. Contact your Councillor

Get in touch with your councillor and ask them to inquire about  LOBO loan borrowing with the Council Finance Officer and to put LOBO loans on the agenda of the next meeting. You can find your local councillor here.

If the council staff refuse to co-operate you can submit questions to council staff in public at the next Full Council or Finance Scrutiny meeting. Each council will have a slightly different procedure for this, and will provide information and dates on their website.

5. Contribute with your own expertise

The #NoLOBOs campaign has been made possible thanks to a network of people with various expertise who have kindly offered their time to unravel different aspects of the LOBO story. Find out here how you can contribute.

6. Set up a local citizen debt audit group

Action can be taken individually, but the more citizens take action together the stronger the impact.  So do get other people to join you. We encourage residents to set up local autonomous groups focusing on local democracy.

We aim to form a decentralised network of autonomous initiative. We wish not to lead , but to provide you with tools to build your own campaign locally.

Get in touch with us if there is anyway we can support you, and do keep us up to date with your activities so we can give them visibility.

7. Spread information about LOBO loans

Our personal networks and local media are very powerful tools, especially when the main stream media does not do it’s job to inform the general public. Please consider sharing information about LOBO loans through your networks:

  • Share the content of this website through Twitter and Facebook with the #NoLOBOs
  • Use some of our prepared tweets to broadcast the main issues – you can find some here
  • Join our mailing list and forward our emails to your networks, friends and family
  • Email and talk to people in your networks personally about LOBO loans and how people can take action.
  • Get LOBO loans into your local paper. We are happy to

8. Organise a public meeting and or workshop for DRUK
Lobo loans and Local Government finance are not easy to understand, but only through gaining more knowledge about how local Government Finance works can we keep our Councils to account. One of the aims of Debt Resistance UK is to democratise the understanding of public finance. We are therefore more then happy to participate in public events or organise specific workshops on these topics in your community. If would like us to do so, just get in touch.

9. Get involved in Debt Resistance UK and help co-ordinate the campaign
We are a small voluntary organisation based in London. We are an open collective of researchers, activists and concerns citizens and we welcome anyone who would like to support the campaign. Find out more through our Debt Resistance UK or get in touch directly.