Briefings and responses

Councils are delivering homelessness strategies that seek to respond to local conditions.

Key messages The Government forecasts the total funding available for council services to be broadly similar in 2019/20 as it is today. In the first year according to the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement there is a fall in ‘core spending power' of 2.8 per cent. Without any increase in council tax there is a fall of 5.3 percent.

Local government plays an important role in providing support to children in their early years.

Devolution within England is the most effective way to create jobs, build homes, strengthen healthy communities and protect the vulnerable.

Adult social care needs to be on a sustainable financial footing and the pressures on the system need to be properly understood.

The LGA is working alongside the Government, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) to ensure individual needs are assessed so that the resettlement offers match people's requirements.

Councils are best-placed to understand the range of needs faced by disadvantaged children.

Local government has a huge, central role to play in tackling this problem.

The LGA strongly supports the move by the Government to ban the distribution, sale and supply of new psychoactive substances (NPS).

Councils have been at the forefront of activity ahead of, during and after flooding to support their residents and businesses.