Should a local council step in to save the biggest local employer?

Here is a great example of the kind of dilemmas faced by local government when an important local business fails…

Cheviot Foods was placed into administration in November 2008. The business is a producer of frozen vegegtable for the UK’s major supermarket groups and employs around 200 people. It is the main employer in Amble, a small town and seaport on the North Sea coast, in Northumberland.

A few weeks ago it looked like the business had been saved through a deal with another food manufacturing group - however this has not yet been completed?

Amble is the kind of town that would find it very hard to recover from a permanent failure of a business the size of Cheviot Foods. So what should the local council do if a buyer cannot be found? Should it offer financial assistance to Cheviot Foods at a time when it budget is already under pressure?

This BBC video takes a brief look at the issues.