Briefings and responses

The LGA believes this is a progressive piece of legislation that would undoubtedly impact on smoking prevalence and ultimately reduce rates of smoking-related disease.

It is encouraging that the Chancellor has announced £1.3 billion of extra funding, through the local government finance settlement, for the next financial year. Together with council tax flexibilities and locally-retained business rates, this will provide a real-terms increase in total core spending power in 2025/26 of around 3.2 per cent. This will help meet some, but not all, of the significant pressures in adult and children’s social care and homelessness support.

There must be joint work with an incoming government to reform – in coproduction with people drawing on care and support – the approach to adult social care, and better joint working between the NHS and local government to support people.

Fly-tipping is inexcusable. It is not only an eyesore for residents, but a serious public health risk, creating pollution and attracting rats and other vermin. We are calling on Government to remove the cap on fixed penalty notices.

The LGA welcomes investment in training and support for all kinship carers, and hope that the lessons learnt from piloting Family Network Support Packages will be swiftly shared. It will be important for the national kinship strategy to also recognise the role of partners in supporting kinship arrangements.

The LGA believes this is a progressive piece of legislation that would undoubtedly impact on smoking prevalence and ultimately reduce rates of smoking-related disease. We look forward to working with the Government and others to enforce this ban as well as ensure plans for a smokefree generation are a success.

School-based counselling and mental health support needs to be fully funded by the Government in all state-funded secondary schools and academies, to help support rising numbers of children and young people reporting mental health issues.

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.

This settlement continues to leave local public health teams with limited resources to maintain essential services such as sexual health services and specialist community public health nursing

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.