The government has published the provisional Local Government Finance
Settlement for 2022-23 setting out proposed funding
allocations for different English councils next year.
In an initial analysis, IFS researchers find that slightly more
funding than expected is being provided, and that councils
serving poorer areas will see the biggest increases, which is a
striking change to what’s been seen since 2010. However, funding
will still be below 2015 levels, and far below pre-austerity
levels. And the fact that data from 2013-14 is being used to
allocate significant chunks of funding next year reminds us of
the importance of updating the funding system to reflect the big
changes in circumstances over the last near-decade.
Kate Ogden, Research Economist at the Institute for
Fiscal Studies said: ‘As expected, the Settlement
confirms a relatively sizeable increase in councils’ core
non-COVID funding for next year – in fact slightly more than set
out in the Spending Review. Perhaps less expected was that
councils in poorer areas are set to receive a bigger boost to
their funding than councils in richer areas, in contrast to what
we’ve seen over the last decade or so. We mustn’t forget that
councils’ budgets this year are being boosted by additional
COVID-19 funding and the loss of this could still pose issues for
councils if pandemic-related pressures don’t significantly abate
next year. And both 2023-24 and 2024-25 are set to see
substantially smaller increases in funding.’
Read the full response here > https://ifs.org.uk/publications/15889
