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.
We do remain concerned by the increase in the charges councils are having to pay to the ICO as data controllers. This comes at a time when local government is under significant financial pressure and councils are receiving no additional government funding to help implement GDPR.
We welcome the decision to provide an exemption for elected representatives. We do however remain concerned by the increase in the charges councils are having to pay to the ICO as data controllers.
We are disappointed the Bill removes the existing requirement to designate a data protection officer. Although the proposal is now to replace this with a Senior Responsible Individual, this is a person at Senior Management Team level who would not have the time or experience to undertake much of what the data protection officer did.
Councils share the Government’s ambition of making sure every child with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) gets the high-quality support that they need. Reforms set out in the Children and Families Act 2014 failed to achieve the goal of improving provisions for children with special educational needs and disabilities and were not supported by sufficient powers or funding to allow councils to meet the needs of children with SEND or hold health and education partners to account for their contributions to local SEND systems.
There is consensus that a hotel is not the right place for children to be living. The LGA agrees with the Government in wanting the National Transfer Scheme (NTS) to work well in ensuring unaccompanied children.
This briefing outlines LGA policy on council tax and council tax reform and also highlights work commissioned by the LGA on council tax and alternative forms of funding for local government.
Councils are supporting children and young people with high quality mental health support. Children’s services see more than 500 cases a day of children presenting with a mental health problem.
The housing shortage is one of the most pressing issues we face. Councils have a key role in delivering more affordable housing and helping to build 300,000 homes a year. The last time this country built more than 250,000 homes a year, councils delivered more than 40 per cent of them
Problem gambling can impact on individuals and their families’ physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing as well as having a wider impact on society through crime and disorder.
COVID-19 has brought into sharp relief the challenges facing adult social care, and in many cases exacerbated them, but it has also powerfully underlined the essential value of social care in supporting people to live the life they want to lead.