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The Government must turn exceptional financial support (EFS) into a ‘managed recovery regime rather than a series of annual decisions', a public finance chief has urged.Writing for The MJ, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) Owen Mapley called for earlier sector-led intervention and ‘recovery plans with tangible progress measures'.Mapley wrote: ‘A sector-led financial resilience team, drawing on both local and independent professional expertise, could undertake rapid peer reviews, challenge assumptions, strengthen finance capacity and help councils develop realistic transformation plans. Support should begin when the warning signs emerge, not after reserves are exhausted.‘Multi-year agreements could provide a clearer planning horizon, but continued support should depend on delivery. Government should publish consistent entry and exit criteria, require comparable reporting and distinguish between temporary liquidity problems, locally remediable failures and structural funding gaps.'Mapley said CIPFA's reviews of councils receiving EFS had shown that recent cases were ‘increasingly caused not by isolated commercial or governance failures, but by a common combination of social care demand, homelessness, SEND [special educational needs and disabilities], depleted reserves and structural funding pressures'.He added: ‘Adult social care, SEND and temporary accommodation are national systems whose costs land heavily in local budgets. Government should assess policy across departmental boundaries so that savings in one place are not merely transferred to councils elsewhere.'EFS has gone from £270m across seven councils in 2020-21 to the Government agreeing around £1.5bn of EFS in 2026-27, with 36 councils allowed to use capital receipts or borrowing to support their revenue budgets.A report to a meeting last night of senior councillors at Croydon LBC, which has relied on EFS since 2020, admitted it was ‘not a sustainable financial strategy'.However, the report still estimated Croydon's ‘total EFS requirement in the region of £300m over the period to 2030-31, with an ongoing annual requirement of at least £60m thereafter'.Nationally, more than one in five social care authorities this financial year needed the normal financial framework to be relaxed in order for them to agree a balanced budget.Modelling commissioned by the County Councils Network (CCN) has suggested that the cost of delivering services across its members will rise by at least £7bn over the next three years, driven largely by soaring demand for adult social care, children's services and SEND home-to-school transport.CCN vice-chair Cllr Steve Broadbent said: ‘These costs will undoubtedly increase further – with inflation remaining stubbornly higher than previously anticipated.'The Local Government Association said the current growing demand for EFS was an ‘inevitable outcome of long-term, system-wide cost and demand pressures rather than being driven by weakness in the performance of individual councils'.A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: ‘We are clear that any support provided through the EFS framework should be a time-limited and temporary measure.'

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FINANCE

Call for long-term EFS plan

By Dan Peters | 15 October 2026

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