Briefings and responses

The LGA supports a local, employer-led approach to develop Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). To enhance this, Mayoral Combined Authorities and local authorities should be core and strategic partners in the LSIP process. Their wide-ranging expertise on this agenda and local knowledge is missing from the Bill, and we hope this is redressed during its passage through Parliament.

As furlough ends, no community will be untouched by unemployment. It is vitally important that a joined up, place-based employment, skills and careers system offers adults and young people the recovery they deserve by providing access to quality education and training opportunities.

Throughout the pandemic, councils were trusted to lead the employment and skills recovery in their areas.

While we support the Bill’s aim to make the skills system more responsive to employers’ needs, the reforms need to be implemented as part of an integrated, place-based approach.

Local government – local authorities (LAs) and mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) – have a crucial role in making the skills and employment system work for their areas, and have wide-ranging functions and expertise in the skills system.

We estimate that local government faces an overall funding gap of £5.8 billion by 2019/20, taking into account future funding and the full range of pressures facing councils.

Together with NHS England, local authorities and the LGA have undertaken a range of measures to improve preparedness for winter.

The issue of relatively low pay in the social care sector is highlighted regularly and the settlement in the Spending Round provides resources to begin to address this challenge. In the long term the low pay needs to be addressed as part of the arrangements for the future funding of both adult and children’s social care.

COVID-19 has put adult social care firmly in the public, political and media spotlight. This emergency has highlighted the essential value of social care to the wider public and this interest needs to be harnessed in the debate about the future of care and support. Long-term reform is urgently needed and we are calling on the Government to set out its thinking at the earliest opportunity.

Adult social care must be treated as a national priority. It is a vital public service that supports people with physical and learning disabilities, those with mental health issues and older people and their carers to live their lives in the way they want.