Briefings and responses

The LGA has worked with Government and Parliament to raise councils’ ongoing concerns over residents’ lack of access to fast and reliable broadband. Many rural areas, in particular, struggle with speeds of less than 2Mbps while others are unable to receive broadband at all.

Councils want to end homelessness and are already doing everything they can within existing resources to prevent and tackle it, but there is no silver bullet and councils alone cannot tackle rising homelessness.

House of Commons, Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 25 October 2016 Key messages

We support Amendment 23 tabled by Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods MP,Teresa Pearce MP and Jim McMahon MP. This would remove from the Bill all the provisions relating to restrictions of the use of planning conditions by local planning authorities

The Local Government Association (LGA) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the technical consultation on the 2017/18 local government finance settlement.

The absence of additional funding for social care will have knock-on effects on the viability of providers and the sustainability of the NHS.

Local authorities have the ultimate responsibility to support, safeguard, care for and house vulnerable members of their community.

Key messages Councils have a statutory duty to subsidise funding for the concessionary travel scheme in England. The scheme provides pensioners and disabled people with free off-peak travel on all local bus services in England.

The Autumn Statement provides a formal update on the state of the economy, responds to the new economic and fiscal forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility and announces the Government’s measures to promote economic growth.

In this year alone (2016), total bus mileage in England outside London decreased by 2.8 per cent, the largest annual decrease since 2003/04.