Productivity Plan

The overall level of funding for local government is insufficient to deliver essential local services. The growth in demand within services such as children's social care, adult's social care and homelessness is unprecedented. These services protect some of the most vulnerable within our society and insufficient funding is putting pressure upon local authorities that cannot be sustained. Additional funding is essential to ensure local authorities can continue to deliver essential services to local residents.

The lack of a fair funding settlement which reflects the needs and deprivation of local areas. The formulas to distribute local government funding are out of date and have not kept pace with the needs across the country. The current funding model prioritises stability and minimises any significant changes to funding, at the cost of those local authorities with greatest need. The Fair Funding review is required to align funding with those areas most in need.

The current system of using business rates to fund local authorities is overly complex and unfair. Although growth is retained locally, there are significant risks associated with business stability during turbulent economic times and also significant changes in rateable value from appeals.

Short-term funding announcements, as seen for the past 6 years, removes stability and creates uncertainty when planning future Council finances. The re-introduction of multi-year settlements is crucial to allow councils to accurately plan their resources and produce deliverable plans for the improvement of the local area.

Competitive funding - the time and cost involved in developing bids is significant and can often be abortive due to unsuccessful bids. This is a significant call on local authority resources. Creating clear long-term funding streams appropriate to the demands of local areas, with freedoms to invest based on local needs is essential to allow local councils to develop and deliver against longer term more strategic aims.

The administrative burden that accompanies grant funding streams including claims, returns and analysis is cumbersome and continues to grow year on year. We appreciate the requirement for transparency and measurement of success particularly in relation to public funds, however the cost associated with this across every local authority will be significant.

A system-wide approach is required to maximise the impact of the public sector. The themes and demands experienced across the sector are common and cross cutting, and the scale of change needed to address them must be done via a collective approach. As a Council we are doing this at a local level, however this is made difficult by individual and often fragmented funding streams and different organisational reporting lines into central government departments. A joined-up approach within central government that is 'place first' would facilitate the work we are doing locally.

The children's social care market is broken and spiralling costs of children's social care placements are placing immense pressure on local authority finances. Regulating the children's social care market to prevent excessive profiteering would help to relieve some of the pressure on local authority budgets and would ensure the most vulnerable children in society can remain protected.

The current funding model for adult's social care is in need of reform. The current model is not fair, where funding does not match those areas with highest deprivation and need. The adult social care levy places the burden of funding adult's social care on local taxpayers.

The Council Tax system for funding local authorities is out of date and needs to be reviewed. The amount a resident pays differs by area. This disadvantages the most deprived local authorities whose residents are less able to afford inflationary increases to Council Tax. The government must allocate sufficient funding to local authorities to provide services without relying on residents paying increasing amounts for them. The increasing reliance on Council Tax income also penalises those authorities with higher levels of Band A and B properties, and places significant pressure adding to the current cost of living challenges.

We have concerns over the data published by the Office for Local Government creating the potential for possible misinterpretation of information. There is the potential for data to be used in manners which are unhelpful in providing local residents with an accurate picture of the state of its local authority.