lol .... Oh this is just the government trying to avoid being blamed for cuts in the local elections.
Councils are required to act prudently in their accounting, and auditors seem to expect councils to hold between 5 and 8% of their annual turnover in reserves. Add to this that there are two forms of reserves - reserves based on day to day monetary turnover - cash in hand if you like - and reserves which are the result of, for example, selling off large assets. The latter are only allowed to be used for spending on major capital projects, not to cover day to day running costs.
Now there are sure to be some councils which have higher, usable, reserves than required for accounting purposes, but that won't be all councils. And if figures being released by HMG include the reserves councils are not allowed to spend on normal running costs, someone in Whitehall is fudging things.
Oh, and just to add a bit of spice to the mix, it seems that spending those reserves will actually increase the deficit HMG is so concerned to reduce.
That information was gleaned from in interview on Radio 4 today -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...mes/b010dhd0#p00gfl32 is the link if anyone is interested.