COUNCILS with more than £10 million tied up in the Icelandic banking crisis are still waiting for their money to be returned.

Wyre Forest District Council has £9 million invested in three of the country’s banks while Wychavon District Council has £1.5 million on a two-year fixed deposit bond with Landsbanki.

Both councils were represented on a recent fact-finding delegation put together by the Local Government Association to find out how likely it was their investments would be returned.

The LGA has been co-ordinating councils’ efforts to get back the money they invested in the wake of the Icelandic banking collapse.

Financial receivers have been working to value Landsbanki’s remaining assets since October after it hit the buffers when the bank’s bosses were left unable to borrow enough money to keep the company going because of the credit crunch.

Wyre Forest has £9 million split between Landsbanki, Heritable and Kaupthing, Singer and Friedlander with creditors’ meetings set to be concluded in December.

Vic Allison, Wychavon’s deputy managing director, said: “We’ll know more about timescales and the likelihood of getting our money back by the end of November.”

He reiterated to the district’s householders that they would be unaffected by the current difficulties.

“I am hoping that we have early answers. One of the things we find difficult to cope with is uncertainty because we have an annual budget,” he explained.

“There’s no question of it affecting next year’s budget, we just need to know for our long-term planning.”

The Government agreed to protect personal savers’ deposits in full early in the year but has not extended the protection to wholesale deposits. However, Mr Allison is hopeful councils will get some of their money returned.

“Landsbanki brought assets with value so they should be worth something,” he said.

John Campion, Wyre Forest District Council leader, criticised the Government’s “backseat” approach and said councils had been left to “sort it out” themselves.