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.
The LGA welcomes this Bill, which will regulate pedicabs and improve the safety of passengers. We understand that a similar Bill has previously had the support of many councils in London.
This briefing provides the LGA view on relevant amendments tabled for the Committee Stage amendments on the Renters' Reform Bill, heard on 17 November 2023.
We welcome the opportunity to work alongside Oflog to achieve the two principal aims set out in the accompanying letter. However, one overarching, general observation would be that it is difficult to see how this new draft set of metrics supports these two aims.
Research commissioned by the LGA found that whilst there have been a raft of successive policies and strategies to improve mental health outcomes for children, there has been a missed opportunity to significantly ease pressure on the system by increasing the availability of preventative and early intervention support. Early intervention has been highlighted as a central aspect in many of these policies, however, this focus has not translated through to action with the system leaning towards prioritising specialist and complex treatments rather than early intervention and prevention.
The National Fraud Initiative (NFI) data sharing exercise has been supported by local authorities for several decades now. It has an important place in counter fraud activities, as well as work to recover and reduce error and debt.
Councils want to go further to tackle regional inequalities in broadband infrastructure and accelerate the roll out in hard-to-reach communities. Local authority digital champions act as a central point of contact, helping to extend gigabit-capable broadband across the country as quickly as possible. We are therefore calling on Government to fully fund a digital champion in every local authority.
Upgrading, replacing and reconnecting these telecare devices, just one element of the PSTN switchover, to the digital network will be extremely costly. GLA Economics estimates the upgrade costs to be £31 million for London boroughs and impacting over 63,000 users.