Councils to get £100m from Icelandic banks

Local authorities are on course to recover more than £100m of savings locked up in the failed Icelandic banks by the end of the year.

They have already been repaid £70m, with at least £30m due to be recovered within three months, the Local Government Association will announce today. However, a further £900m still remains frozen in the Icelandic banks since they collapsed 12 months ago.

The LGA insists that it expects to get back the "lion's share" of council taxpayers' cash once the complicated process of unwinding the banks' affairs is complete. The initial payments were made by the administrators for Heritable and Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander.

No cash has yet been recovered from Glitnir and Landsbanki, which are based in Iceland, but the LGA says it is confident they will have the assets to repay British investors. English councils had £954m, and Welsh councils another £60m, invested in the Icelandic banks.