WARRINGTON Borough Council’s leader says ‘we will be working as hard as we possibly can to make sure’ it can get its credit rating back.

As reported earlier this week, the Labour-run council has seen its credit rating withdrawn – with ratings agency Moody’s pulling its credit rating of the heavily indebted council.

It comes amid the council’s debt totalling around £1.85 billion.

The local authority told bondholders, on Monday, that Moody’s withdrew its rating due to ‘the inability of the council to procure that its statements of accounts are audited by external auditors’.

During the full council meeting on Monday evening, in response to a question, council leader Cllr Hans Mundry said the council ‘was probably one of about half a dozen authorities who had the credit rating in the first place’.

He said he thinks it has been removed ‘simply because of the auditing problems’, adding there are ‘lots of council who are actually waiting for their auditing reports to be done and we’ve caught up in that process’.

Cllr Mundry also said ‘it’s not to do with council, it’s to do with the auditing process’ and said ‘it’s not just Warrington, lots of councils up and down the country have got the same sort of situation for their council’.

He added ‘we will be working as hard as we possibly can to make sure we can get the rating back’.