Briefings and responses

Keeping children safe is one of the most important roles a council fulfils. While England remains one of the safest places in the world to grow up thanks to the tireless work of our children’s services colleagues and their partners, we agree that significant reform is needed to ensure the right systems are in place to not only protect children, but to help them and their families to thrive.

Councillors are experiencing increasing levels of online intimidation, abuse and threats against them, which can prevent elected members from representing the communities they serve and undermine public trust in democratic processes.

We welcome the opportunity to comment on the proposed technical changes to homelessness legislation following Renter’s Reform as this may have an impact on the way homelessness services carry out their duties.

A Commission on the Future of Employment Support is looking at ways in which employment support and services could more effectively help people who want to, to move into, and progress in work and help employers find, recruit and retain the right people across the UK. The Institute for Employment Studies is providing the secretariat for the Commission.

Joint vision from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), NHS Confederation and the LGA on the long-term solutions required to make our health and care system resilient, preventative and promoting independence.

While the Local Government Association welcomes an overall increase in baseline funding for local authorities, we express concern that a significant proportion of the increase in core spending power for 2023/24 has been achieved through a combination of potentially one-off grants, ring-fenced funding, re-allocation of existing funding, and the assumption that local authorities will implement council tax increases. We continue to make the case for multi-year settlements and for more long-term certainty around funding and budgets.

Councils are committed to working with Government and developers to meet the Government’s aspirations of 300,000 new homes per year, with land for more than 2.6 million homes allocated in Local Plans.

The Local Government Association (LGA) supports the overall aims of the Online Safety Bill (OSB), which makes provisions for Ofcom to regulate certain internet services. The regulation proposed in this Bill is aimed at ensuring platforms have systems and processes in place to deal with illegal and harmful content and their associated risk. 

The LGA's submitted written evidence to the Government review of integrated care systems, led by the Right Hon Patricia Hewitt.

We are pleased that the Government has proposed to speed up the process and make good on its commitment to offer all of England the opportunity to benefit from a devolution deal by 2030.