TheLGA has just released its Meeting the challenges ahead report, warning of a looming funding crisis facing local government. Suzanne Cumberbatch explains Vulnerable looked-after children, an ageing population, and environmental issues, are all making the headlines on a daily basis. But, according to the Local Government Association, a care and waste crisis is looming unless funding issues can be dealt with. Last week, almost 10 years on from the last comprehensive spending review, the LGA released a report Meeting the challenges ahead to assess the difficulties facing Britain in the coming decade. With demands on services continuing to increase and costs continuing to rise, financial demands on local government are greater than ever. Between 2006 and 2008, councils will see 40 new burdens placed on their shoulders arising from legislative change and EU Directives. These include safeguarding vulnerable groups, following the Bichard report recommendations on record keeping, vetting and information handling. A minimum fostering allowance to improve the quality of foster care; children's centres ensuring at least 650,000 pre-school children in the 20% most disadvantaged wards can access children's centres; and the new Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. Delays in implementing the WEEE Directive mean councils, rather than producers, have to pay for WEEE to be taken away. Launching the report, chairman of the LGA, Lord Bruce-Lockhart, said crucial decisions had to be made by ministers on how local government services were to be funded. The report criticises the claim that local government has been generously funded since 1997/1998, highlighting the fact that ministers continually cite a 40% real increase in funding. 'Alongside the 50% increase in spending, this does indeed appear generous,' it states. 'The fact is, however, for services other than schools, and other specific grant-funded government priorities, government funding has increased by just 14% in real terms. This is in stark contrast to the 90% provided to the NHS.' This 'unprecedented increase in spending' has, according to the LGA, been funded by the taxpayer because government grant has not kept pace with the demands on local government. 'Demand for social care is rising by 6% every year,' says Lord Bruce-Lockhart. 'In the next three years alone, there will be more than 400,000 more older people, many of whom will require social care. 'Without additional funding, local government may potentially face a situation, by as early as 2009, where it cannot afford to provide support to the 370,000 people with lower levels of need.' Crucially, this lower level of care is the sort of early intervention care which enables people to stay in their own homes longer, and can save the NHS money. Following the report's release, Cumbria CC's director of social care Jill Standard said the report addressed important issues. 'This is a timely report which spells out why providing social care for our ageing population is going to be every bit as challenging as funding pensions in the future,' she says. 'Providing the sort of individual care and support which older people increasingly expect means we have to be more innovative in finding ways to care for people in their own homes and other facilities such as extra care housing.' The challenges set out for the future, according to the report, are great, and the Government has set high ambitions for what it hopes to achieve. But the report questions whether the Government is ready to pay for the cost of meeting the future challenges it has outlined. If it is prepared to fund these, then local government is 'committed to working to deliver the high-quality public services local people want. If not, then the Government must be honest about the priorities it is prepared to fund, the impact this will have on local services, and the burden it is choosing to shift on to council taxpayers'.
