The Chancellor’s Budget, delivered on Monday 29 October, provided a formal update on the state of the economy, responded to the new economic and fiscal forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility and announced the Government’s fiscal measures.
KEY MESSAGES
- The Chancellor’s Budget Statement shows the Government is listening to our call for desperately-needed investment in our under-pressure local services.
- Our Budget submission highlighted the need to urgently plug the funding gap facing councils in 2019/20. The Chancellor has acted to help tackle some of this immediate funding crisis, and more investment will be needed in the long-term.
- While funding and some of the measures announced will ease some of the immediate financial pressure facing our local services, it falls short of what we need in the long-term. Local government in England continues to face significant funding gaps. Rising demand for adult social care, children’s services and homelessness support will continue to threaten other services our communities rely on, including libraries, cleaning streets and maintaining park spaces.
- It is good news that the Government has accepted our long-standing call to scrap the housing borrowing cap immediately. We will support councils to build those good quality affordable new homes and infrastructure that everyone in our communities need.
- We are pleased that the Government has acted by providing an injection of desperately-needed funding into revitalising our town centres, and it is important that councils, with their place shaping roles, have full flexibility over how this funding is spent.
- It is critical that the Chancellor takes the opportunity to tackle the long-term financial challenges facing local government in the Spending Review. This will allow councils to play a full part in the prosperity of the nation and through preventative work, reduce the wider costs on public services.
- Investing in local government is good for the nation’s prosperity, economic growth and the overall health and wellbeing of the nation. We now urge the Government to use the forthcoming Spending Review to deliver a truly sustainable funding settlement for local government.
The full set of documents is available on the HM Treasury website.
Budget 2018
Ahead of each Budget statement the LGA responds to the Government's call for written representations. Our submissions outline proposals for government policy for inclusion in the forthcoming Budget. Following the Budget statement, we publish a briefing, highlighting the main announcements and their impact on local government.