Ceredigion County Council is sinking in a sea of red ink and carries more than three times the amount of debt than it has in its reserves.

According to data obtained by the BBC’s Shared Data Unit, Ceredigion owes £1,723.13 for every man, woman and child living in the county now. And over the past year, Ceredigion officials have added nearly £20 million to the staggering debt pile.

At the end of fiscal 2023-24, Ceredigion was in hock to the tune of £106.3 million. A year later, that mountain of debt has ballooned to £125.9 million.

Alarmingly, the council has just £41 million in its reserves – leaving it with a dangerous reserve to debt ratio of just 32.6 per cent.

In the past month alone, the council has agreed to borrow even more money, hitting the Welsh Government up for £1.8 million to buy a Lampeter farm as part of a Sixth Form skills campus, trimmed £120,000 from the wages structure – but topping up senior staff pay grades by £10,000.

By comparison, while Ceredigion grew its debt pile by nearly 18.5 per cent over the fiscal year, neighbouring Gwynedd managed to trim its council debt by 2.27 per cent. Gwynedd reduced its debt from £203 million to £198.3 million during the financial year.

While the reduction of 2.27 per cent might not seem much, Gwynedd did so at a time when it, Ceredigion and every other local authority faced the same severe inflationary and cost pressures.

Only urban and densely populated local authorities, in Merthyr Tydfil (21.2 per cent), Newport (24.5 per cent), Torfaen (26.8 per cent) and Vale of Glamorgan (18.5 per cent) managed to increase their percentage of borrowing more than the rural and sparsely populated county of Ceredigion with its 75,000 residents.

Ceredigion is one of four councils controlled by Plaid Cymru across Wales.

Anglesey managed to reduce its overall debt by 0.3 per cent, from £121.5 million to £121.1 million during the last financial year that concluded at the end of March.

Carmarthenshire marginally increased its county debt by 1.4 per cent from £410.1 million to £415.8 million over the same period.

Gwynedd, with a similar demographic profile as Ceredigion, decreased its overall debt as a result of three loans maturing during the fiscal year. While the current overall debt total of £198.3 million in Gwynedd seems high, the council has on hand £127 million in reserves, giving it a reserve to debt ratio of 64 per cent – giving its Plaid-run council twice as much safety net as currently exists with its party cadres in Ceredigion.

Over the year, Gwynedd Council managed to reduce the individual debt burden for every county resident from £1,703.03 to £1,664.40 – a reduction of £38.63 per capita.

The red-ink figures leave Ceredigion as the fiscal black sheep in the party’s local authority ranks. Its council tax increase of 9.3 per cent last year and the overall Band D tax rate of £2,104 is nearly four per cent above the Wales average of £2,024.

A spokesperson for Ceredigion County Council told Cambrian News that its debt at the end of 2023-24 stood at £105,774,169 rather than the rounded-up BBC Shared Data Unit figure, but it agreed with the data on its debt burden for the end of 2024-25.

The council spokesperson said the cost of servicing debt was £4.426 million in 2023-24.

For 2024-25, the cost to Ceredigion taxpayers of servicing the ballooning debt level swelled to just under £5 million in the financial year just ended.

We asked how the debt grew so much over the past 12 months.

“[The] Welsh Government have provided funding towards the cost of the Aberaeron coastal defence scheme in order for the council to undertake borrowing,” the spokesperson said. “Loans totalling £24.908 million were taken out during September 2024. At the end of the financial year 2024/25 the balance on the coastal defence scheme loans had reduced to £24.288 million due to repayments made per the loan agreement. Repayments against other loans, per their loan conditions, were made during 2024/25 which resulted in the closing balance of debt being £125.875 million.”

Asked how the council would provide short- and long-term savings against its debt, the council told Cambrian News: “No savings are required in the short term or in the long term.

“When the council borrows it considers carefully how the loan repayments can be financed throughout the term of the loan and ensures the budget is available – this is illustrated with the example of the loans for the coastal defence scheme.”

A spokesperson for Gwynedd Council said its cost of servicing the county’s debt burden was £10.9 million in 2023-34, and this increased to £11.4 million in 2024-25.

A Gwynedd spokesperson said: “We have a long-term plan to repay the individual loans as they mature and sums are set aside as is required by accounting standards, legislation and when it is prudent to do so. We will only look at paying debts off early if this is financially advantageous to do so, since most long-term loans have early repayment penalties.”

Between the end of March in 2024 and 2025, Powys piled on more than £40 million to its massive debt pile – an increase of some 12.5 per cent.

As things stood at the end of March this year, the county council owes a third of a billion pounds - £367.6 million – compared to £327.4 million in the previous 12 months.

Over the same period, the council put every person in the county a further £299.41 in hock.

Together, the 22 Welsh councils owe a combined £6.4 billion, and all of the local authorities in the United Kingdom together carry a debt burden of more than £122 billion.

A spokesperson for Powys County Council said: “The council continues to face increasing demand for services, particularly in social care, price inflation, provider costs and national pay awards, many beyond our control meaning that the council will face a significant budget gap for many years to come.

“The council in its current form is not sustainable for the longer term, it has embarked on ‘Sustainable Powys’ programme to ensure it can remain financially stable and provide sustainable services.

“Planned budget savings will focus on transforming our services, increasing efficiency, driving down costs and raising more income. We will continue to invest in some capital schemes which improve key council assets supporting the delivery of statutory services and delivering budget savings.”

The council said it could not provide specific details of the cost of servicing the debt because of the bank holiday and publication deadlines. It did not provided details of any levels of reserves, meaning that the overall debt burden cannot be put in context with its current finances.

Across the UK, councils added more than £7 billion to their total debts, the Shared Data Unit found. A total of 32 councils had no borrowing on their books at the end of 24-25. There were no Welsh authorities on that debt-free list.