Responding to the local authority revenue expenditure and finance statistics published today, Cllr Richard Watts, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Resources Board, said:
“Local government in England faces an overall funding gap of almost £8 billion by 2025. As these figures show, councils are increasingly having to divert money from other services to meet an unprecedented surge in demand for children’s and adult social care.
“Last year saw the biggest annual increase in children in care since 2010 and councils are now starting 500 child protection investigations every day. This rise in demand for child protection support, means councils are increasingly only able to provide urgent help for children and families already at crisis point, leaving very little to invest in early intervention.
“Councils in England receive 1.8 million new requests for adult social care a year. Increased spend on adult social care – which now accounts for nearly 40 per cent of total council budgets - is threatening the future of other vital council services, such as parks, leisure centres and libraries, which help to keep people well and from needing care and support and hospital treatment.
“That is why the LGA has launched its own adult social care green paper to kick-start a desperately-needed debate on how to pay for adult social care and rescue the services caring for older and disabled people from collapse.
“More and more councils are struggling to balance their books. The next Spending Review will be make or break for local services and must recognise the urgent need to tackle the funding gap facing local government.”
- By 2020, local authorities will have faced a reduction to core funding from the Government of nearly £16 billion since 2010. That means that councils will have lost 60p out of every £1 the Government had provided to spend on local services
- The LGA’s green paper consultation, which runs until 26 September, is available here. The LGA will respond to the findings in a further publication in the autumn, which will be used to influence the Government’s own expected green paper, forthcoming Autumn Budget for 2019/20 and Spending Review
- Read our latest report on local government funding
- A report by the office for National Statistics published yesterday showed improvement in the public finances. In response, the LGA called on the Government to invest in addressing the growing funding gaps facing our local services.
Moving the conversation on
We have published a series of papers, commissioned by LGA boards, which start the new thinking around building the case for long term, sustained investment in local government as well as laying out the positive outcomes this would deliver for the country.