Jonathan Carr-West, Chief Executive of LGIU, said:
“The Chancellor’s Budget has fallen short when it comes to what
councils up and down the country desperately need to help their
communities out of this pandemic.
While everyone’s attention has been on Covid-19, no strategic
progress has been made on any of the key issues that matter to
councils, even as they get progressively worse. No social care
green paper, no Fair Funding Review, no business rate retention
scheme, no devolution white paper.
The state of local government finances is not only unsustainable
it is failing fast. Our survey of those leading across local
government have shown this time and time again.
All these problems have been decades in the making with councils
left to pick up the pieces, all while operating in conditions of
deep uncertainty. And as councils across the country set their
budgets on the basis of another ad hoc one year financial
settlement, these uncertainties make their job even harder.
The Chancellor made much of the UK’s potential as we recover from
the pandemic but that recovery will depend on local government
being as fighting fit as possible, and that fitness is undermined
in many key areas by our failure to address these long-standing
policy dilemmas.
Local government is at the centre of communities and provides the
services that matter most to people in their daily lives. The
pandemic has highlighted that, but neither local government nor
the local public service workers we have spent the last year so
effusively praising see any benefit from this budget. Unless we
are building prosperous, resilient, well governed places then the
Chancellor’s vision of a green, high tech, high skills economy
will be built on sand.
We still have a long way to go.”
