After Woking's bankruptcy articles were written about the responsibility of various politicians. However, the government's role was mostly ignored. After looking at this role I think five simple safeguards should be implemented nationally.

The first safeguard changes the only one we currently have. In a "cost saving" move, the previous government allowed a single expert to check the numbers on Woking's loans and then did no further assessment.

I believe that this expert was former council CEO Ray Morgan, a man who wanted Woking to have skyscrapers.

Having a role in planning future work and checking those finances creates a conflict of interest. In future, these experts should be independent of the council.

This still leaves just one safeguard in a system handling loans of hundreds of millions. Therefore, the second safeguard is to have council staff who review loan requests but to require that they be as separate from council leadership as possible. This would mean it cannot be a department head.

By doing this they won’t be affected by, or have close contact with, colleagues who may have the same conflict of interest mentioned earlier. It makes sense to have this added to the responsibilities of a small number of finance professionals working in other capacities, but there wouldn’t be nearly enough work for a full-time role.

The third proposed safeguard is for each central government body that lends money to have a small team checking loans. These teams would specialise in assessing council loan applications and should have enough work for a handful of full-time accountants.

The final two safeguards would be training and emergency contacts for councillors, as it is unusual for them to be financial professionals. Courses are already available to local councillors, and some would be easy to update with basic guidance on debt, bankruptcy and how to identify problems.

The same applies to designing small documents with similar information. The value of this training and material should be emphasised to new councillors. If, after following this guidance, a councillor has concerns, they should be able to contact another team of professionals, likely in central government, who act as a final safeguard.

These five safeguards come at a price. Although it is difficult to estimate this nationally, less than £40 million per year is reasonable.

In Woking alone, the cost of not having these safeguards is loan interest of around £65 million each year, plus fees for commissioners, advisors and investigations. This debt may leave a permanent scar on national finances.

Woking's bankruptcy, a single failure in one town, may cost more than protecting the entire UK with safety measures that may initially seem excessive to some.

Most importantly, there are other councils in financial difficulty and we should expect missing safeguards to lead to future bankruptcies.

These safeguards are simple, common sense and cost effective. The government should not have a single point of failure for large loans and should follow a mantra of "trust, but verify" even when there are "experts" in place.