An ignored email at Stoke-on-Trent City Council is said to have cost the local authority £5m. The council is still £5m out of pocket after officials failed to divest from failing Icelandic bank Landsbanki, which collapsed in October 2008. The council had always maintained that it had followed government advice over the bank, but it was last night admitted that an unnamed senior finance officer received an email a week before the collapse advising that Landbanki's credit status had changed.

Oxfordshire County Council is to press ahead with library funding cuts and job losses despite government grant cuts sparing relatively Oxfordshire compared to other local authorities. Oxfordshire's grant was cut by 1.87 per cent, compared to the 8.9 per cent of some councils. Council leader Keith Mitchell said that the cut was "not good news". "We are pretty close to our estimates, but you cannot call it good news," he said.

A Liberal Democrat town councillor in Kendal has resigned from his party over his party's MPs breaking their pledge to vote against a rise in tuition fees. Eddie Maughan, who represents the Heron Hill ward, said he was quitting because of the "unprincipled actions" of his party's coalition ministers. Councillor Maughan, who will now sit as an independent, said that "a clear pledge was made by the party to vote against any increase in tuition fees, and this has been broken without good reason".

A councillor in Flintshire is angry after he was criticised on the internet by another councillor. Councillor Klaus Armstrong-Braun, who sits in the Saltny ward, found a statement about him written by councillor Carolyn Thomas, criticising his involvement in her ward of Treuddyn. The statement said that councillor Armstrong-Braun did not represent Treuddyn, and that any issues should be raised with councillor Thomas. Armstrong-Braun said that he was "entitled to be concerned as a member of the public" and was not always acting in this role as councillor.