On behalf of its membership, the cross-party LGA regularly submits to Government
consultations, briefs parliamentarians and responds to a wide range of parliamentary inquiries. Our recent
responses to government consultations and parliamentary briefings can be found here.
The evidence of the financial strain on councils has been growing and today’s settlement does not provide enough funding to meet the severe cost and demand pressures which have left councils of all political colours and types warning of the serious challenges they face to set balanced budgets next year.
The changes in the 2003 Local Government Act and 2003 Capital Finance Regulations that introduced the Prudential Code were a major step in freeing local government from centrally imposed borrowing controls
The practice note includes a lot of technical detail that is primarily written for auditors and we have not previously commented on its content, or on recent consultations on changes to it. The reason we feel the need to comment this time is not because we have concerns over the approach taken by the Public Audit Forum to date, but because local audit is currently in crisis, and we would welcome any action that can be taken to help provide solutions that can alleviate the effects of the crisis.
It is disappointing that the Public Health Grant allocations for 2023/24 have been published so late (15 March). With two weeks away from the start of the financial year and councils are only just being formally told how much money is being made available for councils to tackle costly public health issues such as sexual health, drug and alcohol services and stop smoking services.
This settlement continues to leave local public health teams with limited resources to maintain essential services such as sexual health services and specialist community public health nursing