If we lived in an ideal world, councils would offer a comprehensive and all-encompassing local service: well maintained and lit highways and roads, an extensive local library service, and school transport that goes above and beyond the legal minimum, to name but a few.
However, austerity has necessitated a departure from that ideal. No part of the public sector has escaped, but councils have had it tougher than most, in part, perhaps due to local government’s track record of prudent financial management and success year-after-year in delivering our legal requirement of balanced budgets. While councils saw their budgets fall 40% between 2010 and 2015, the last four years have arguably seen the most extreme reductions.
All councils have suffered, but county authorities have had some of the toughest challenges. Shire counties are historically the lowest funded councils, receiving significantly less per person than urban authorities, and between 2016 to 2020 funding for county local authorities has fallen by a further 43%– higher than anywhere else.
But it isn’t just funding cuts. Exacerbating the situation is the rise in demand hitherto unseen. Referrals to children’s service have risen by 106% in a decade, while the number of over 65s has risen by 10% in the last three years alone. Counties now spend two-thirds of their budgets on just adult social care and children’ services, and this demand shows no sign of abating. As a result, over the two years to 2020 county authorities face a funding gap of £3.2billion, largely due to costs outside of their control.
It is therefore inevitable that councils have had to move away from the ideal, with local communities seeing highly-valued services reduced to a minimum, discretionary services disappearing, and new charges for services ranging from black sacks to parts of social care.
But without taking truly tough decisions, the outlook would have been even more bleak. Today’s research on the usage of capital receipts is indicative of these difficult decisions. Although some councils dispute the accuracy of the figures, if councils hadn’t used receipts from asset sales to fund statutory redundancies frontline services would have needed to be cut even further.
If given the choice, would you consider selling a disused council building to raise funds to deliver a balanced budget – or would you retain that asset for potential future use but instead cut adult social care, or raise charges for care packages? Put bluntly, these are some of the difficult decisions facing councils every day.
Local politicians do not go into public service to slash and burn or make valued staff redundant, let alone sell assets to do this. But this is the financial reality of years of funding reductions and rising demand.
Last week, we launched a new campaign – ‘A Fairer Future for Counties’ – calling for additional funding for local government in the Spending Review; a solution to the funding crisis in the forthcoming social care green paper, and a fairer distribution of resources for county areas.
However, we cannot simply put forward blank cheque arguments – local government can play a pivotal role in post-Brexit regional growth and we must put together a compelling case for the Treasury to invest in councils.
With substantial extra funding – and a fairer distribution of government grants – we may get close to something resembling an ideal for county local services which residents rely on.
Simon Edwards is director of the County Councils Network
