Spending watchdogs have told the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to do more to understand the impact of funding cutbacks on council services.
The intervention comes in the National Audit Office’s (NAO) latest report on the financial sustainability of local authorities, which have been landed with 37% real terms funding cutbacks from 2010/11 to 2015/16.
Auditors praised local authorities for coping with the cuts, with all councils managing to agree budgets and meet in-year expenditure.
But local auditors warned that one in six upper-tier authorities (16%) was not well placed to deliver this year’s (2014/15) financial budgets.
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