Briefings and responses

The LGA supports the focus on ensuring all children get the right support at the right time, particularly in the context of the impact of the pandemic and the widening attainment gap. The amount of funding made available to support education catch-up must be kept under review to ensure every child has the support they need to learn, and to support their broader development and wellbeing.

A rise in mental health problems in children and young people in recent years, exacerbated by COVID-19, has placed additional pressures on services and has hindered progress in reaching access targets. Targets set to improve the quality of care within inpatient settings, and to reduce their use in the long term, not been met.

We need to ensure that children and young people can also access high-quality mental health support outside of school. Many children and young people face challenges accessing support for their mental health. Patchy implementation of policies has also fuelled a postcode lottery in provision meaning that children and young people do not get a consistent offer of support.

As the consultation notes, rough sleeping and begging can often be conflated, and the overlap between them is complex.

Councils and households are working together to increase recycling rates, with plastic packaging collected by councils doubling over the past decade. Councils are ready to take on the challenge of improving recycling rates further.  

Councils are determined to prevent and stop domestic abuse in all its forms. They play a vital role protecting older people from abuse through a range of front-line services, and have a statutory responsibility for safeguarding vulnerable adults with care and support needs.

The key announcements of relevance to local government in the 2022 Queen's Speech, the LGA’s initial view of the proposals and the implications for councils.

This briefing details the new Bills of relevance to local government in the Queen's Speech and outlines our local government priorities.

This briefing gives the LGA’s views on the public health settlement for local authorities.

The local government finance settlement is the annual determination of funding to local government from central government. This briefing covers the provisional settlement for 2022/23. We expect the final 2022/23 settlement to be laid before the House of Commons, for its approval, in late January or early February 2022.