Central government cuts force local authorities to break
children’s services and social care budgets by over £800 million,
while school reserves are now £180 million in deficit.
Local authorities are being forced to overspend on their budgets
for children’s services and social care, and run a huge deficit
in their reserves for schools, due to local government cuts,
figures compiled by the show.
In 2017/2018 local authorities spent £816,554,685 over budget on
children’s services and social care due to growing demand, and
were forced to make cuts elsewhere and draw on reserves as a
result. Across England school reserves are £180 million in
deficit.
This comes at the same time as Conservative-run Northamptonshire
County Council has effectively been declared bankrupt twice and
Tory neglect of local government has led to Conservative councils
in East Sussex, Somerset and Surrey cutting services to the bone
in an attempt to avoid the same fate.
MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary
of State for Communities and Local Government, said:
“ must use his speech on
Monday at Tory Conference to commit to rapid change in direction.
The Government can no longer ignore this crisis.
“Unless we see additional investment into local services and
local government, councils will be in an impossible position and
more will follow Northamptonshire into bankruptcy.
“Tory austerity clearly isn’t working and has utterly failed
local government. If the Conservatives are incapable of offering
solutions to fix this crisis they need to step aside and let
Labour give local councils the funding and support they so
desperately need.”
Ends
Notes to editors
1. Research carried out by the House of Commons Library comparing
Local Authority budget estimates to final year spending, showed
unplanned overspend in Children’s Services and unexpected
reductions in all other services:
(2017-18, £ thousands (positive figures indicate final year
spending was higher than in budget original budget)
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/srrz3l3NvS82HcmbYWInsOhcHh3qBpJPXg9FkkYL04xCzwIQXttuAnsZ3W6Ps9oLZ8ivpkIUGqyVYHV1fZW4G8ToONs4lxmmAJkIEOhOPwBZmDk7pIW-pxsXKfYlex9pb4BsfItI
2. Across England between 1 April 2017, and 31 March 2018 the
levels of reserves changed as a whole as follows:
a) School reserves: -£180.5 million
b) Public Health reserves: -£5.5 million
c) Unallocated financial reserves: +£79 million
3. The Local Government Association (LGA) believes that councils
will have lost 77% of their budget by 2020. The Conservative
chair of the LGA, , says that will leave an
£5.8bn funding gap for local government: ‘We won’t be cleaning
the streets, we won’t be cutting the grass, we won’t be putting
streetlights on at all, your libraries will go, your potholes
won’t get filled up.’
4. The LGA warn that by 2025 the funding gap will grow to £8
billion unless we see a change in direction.
