Briefings and responses

Despite welcoming additional funding announced in the 2022 Autumn Statement and 2023/24 Local Government Finance Settlement councils are still under intense financial pressure. Councils face ongoing inflationary and pay pressures alongside spiking demand and market challenges in areas such as children’s social care and temporary accommodation.

The Non-Domestic Rating Bill implements a number of changes to the system of non-domestic rates (known as business rates) in England and Wales.

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, particularly to children and young people.

The LGA recognises the delicate balance this legislation must maintain between preserving users’ freedom of expression and civil liberties whilst also protecting users from harmful content.

Local government as democratically elected leaders of place, also play a key role in stimulating local economies and want to ensure that employers have a supply of skilled workforce to meet the current and future business demands in local areas.

The current UK financial sector is not well suited for many low-income households. The case for supporting people to access affordable and responsible finance from organisations like credit unions and Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) is clear.

The LGA supports the overall aims of the Online Safety Bill (OSB), which makes provisions for the regulation by Ofcom of 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, particularly to children and young people. The Bill primarily does this by introducing duties of care to some user-to-user services (e.g. social media sites) and search engines. The Bill also imposes duties on such providers in relation to the protection of users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy.

We strongly support a preventative, assets-based approach to health, which recognises that the essential components of good health go far beyond NHS treatment and care.  An assets-based approach supports repeople to make healthy choices and enables them to live healthy, independent and productive lives. If they have health and social care needs, our approach is to provide community-based and person-centred care and support which enables them to live independently and live their lives as they choose.

Smoking is the single largest cause of preventable death and the biggest cause of cancer worldwide. As well as impacting upon health, smoking places a significant burden on the public purse, to the tune of £12.6 billion each year.

To improve the lives of the armed forces community across the whole country, councils want to work closely with the Government before, during and after the transition of service personnel into civilian life.