Responding to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies into
the growing cost of social care, Cllr Claire Kober, Chair of the
Local Government Association’s Resources Board, said:
“Demand for services caring for adults and children continues to
rise but core funding from central government to councils
continues to go down. This means councils have no choice but to
squeeze budgets from other services, such as roads, street
lighting and bus services to cope.
“Within two years, more than half of the council tax everyone
pays will have to be spent on adult social care and children’s
services. Councils will be asking people to pay similar levels of
council tax while at the same time, warning communities that the
quality and quantity of services they enjoy could drop.
“The Government must recognise that councils cannot continue
without sufficient and sustainable resources. Local government
must be able to keep every penny of taxation raised locally to
plug funding gaps and pay for the vital local services our
communities rely on.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. Analysis by the LGA reveals almost
60p in every £1 that people pay in council tax may have to be
spent caring for children and adults by 2020, leaving
increasingly less to fund other services, like fixing potholes,
cleaning streets and running leisure centres and libraries. For
every £1 of council tax collected by councils in 2019/20:
- · 56p
will be spent on caring for the elderly, vulnerable adults and
children. This is up from 41p in 2010/11.
2. As a result of the pressures on adult
social care and children's services, less funding is available to
be spent on other vital services. For example, 6p in every £1 of
council tax by 2020 could be spent on collecting bins and
recycling, 5p in every £1 on improving roads and street-lighting,
2p in every £1 on bus services and just over 1p in every £1 on
trading standards, licensing and food safety.
- 3. Adult social care services caring
for elderly and disabled people face an annual funding gap of
£2.3 billion by 2020.
- 4. Children’s services face a £2
billion annual funding gap by 2020 - a child is being referred to
council children’s services every 49 seconds on a daily basis and
councils started more than 500 child protection investigations
every day last year – up from 200 a decade ago.
