When BT refused to accommodate Liverpool council's budget cuts, the council discovered that bringing its IT services back in-house from the telecoms giant after a 10-year contract ended in 2014 would save £30m over three years.
Despite the scale of the operation by Basildon council, which includes a camp to accommodate bailiffs, police, council staff and the hundreds of journalists from around the world covering the case, it took three individuals, without the aid of a lawyer, to put a stop to their plans.
Persuading councils to accommodate more refugees is a delicate art, but it is one that David Simmonds – who has overseen a successful drive to get councils to find homes for 20,000 vulnerable Syrian refugees – has begun to master.
Work is in the pipeline with nine other councils to accommodate more.
Recent "plot chopping" by councils to accommodate rising demand has been controversial.
England will be different, he insists, and points to the extended discussions that have taken place with the council to accommodate residents' concerns.
Notting Hill's wealth enables it to make vibrant declaration of its diversity - its Italianate Victorian villas, petite mews houses and council estates accommodate an astonishing variety of peoples from Spain, Italy, Ireland and especially the Caribbean.
A London council's plan to move housing benefit claimants to Stoke-on-Trent will increase pressure on already vulnerable neighbourhoods and could prompt an increase in "divisive rightwing extremism", according to one housing association asked by the council to accommodate 500 families.
The Gypsy Council said Bournemouth council should accommodate the travellers elsewhere in the borough.
Such was the interest in the application, council chiefs moved the meeting from a Civic Hall committee room to the main council chamber to accommodate all the interested parties.
