After turning down a Bitcoin booty, one city council’s cuts tell the story of broke Britain

We’ve all been there: you throw something away and then a decade later it ends up being worth £600m. That’s the lot of James Howells, who has spent the years since 2013 trying to convince Newport City Council to let him search a dump for a hard drive containing the key for 8,000 Bitcoin. At the time of writing, that lost cryptocurrency would be worth a touch more than £618m. 

Howells offered to cut the council in on 25% of the booty in 2021, a trove representing around £150million.

In a recent court defeat, a judge ruled Howells’ case had no reasonable prospect of succeeding, while lawyers for the council accused Howells of trying to “bribe” the council with offering a share of the Bitcoin to the community.

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Yet like local authorities around the country, Newport finds itself in dire financial straits. Instead of “looking like fucking Bel Air”, as Howells described the potential prize, the city is being forced to consider cuts and savings.

Leaders had worried about a £20m shortfall for 2025/26 before the Welsh government gave it the biggest funding increase of any council in Wales. The city is having to save £4.3m to balance its budget, and increasing council tax by 6.7%.

Here are some of the cuts and savings which were on the table. Not all made it into the council’s final 2025/6 budget – but all serve as an illustration of how economic troubles trickle down into everyday life in towns and cities.

• The council plans to cut the number of libraries “in line with reducing demand for the service”. This will save £102,000, or 1.3 Bitcoin.

• It floated the idea of means testing social care support services, saving £346,000, or 4.4 Bitcoin, as well as reducing the number of cars for the mayor and leader from two to one. This would have saved £10,000, or 0.12 Bitcoin.

• Proposed new charges include library fines increasing from 22p to 25p per day; the price of a standard grave space increasing from £1,378 to £1,488.80 per plot; and car parking in city parks for two hours increasing from £1 to £1.50. Getting a food hygiene rescore is increasing from £180 to £255, an increase of 41.7%, while family history research would increase from £32.50 to £40 per hour.

• The price of abseiling from the city’s Transporter bridge is not increasing from £291.

Newport isn’t the only council in trouble. A record total of 30 councils have been granted “exceptional support” by the government.

“We are under no illusion of the state of council finances,” said local government minister Jim McMahon. “We will offer a relationship of partnership – not punishment – in our joint mission to improve public services for communities”. Birmingham, Bradford and Windsor and Maidenhead will be allowed to borrow over £100m.

If only they had 1,200 Bitcoin lying around on a hard drive somewhere.

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