Local and central government are at loggerheads over claims a funding crisis is inevitable unless ministers make crucial care and waste decisions. Meeting the challenges ahead, a Local Government Association report, highlights the Government's warning of a significant slow down in public spending and potentially, a real-terms funding freeze for local government. But, the report states, ‘demands will continue to increase, costs are still rising and the challenges are greater than ever'. LGA chairman Lord Bruce-Lockhart said tough decisions must be made over how local government services, including care for the elderly, looking after vulnerable children and disposing of the growing waste mountain, would be funded in the next decade. He warned that by 2009, councils would potentially face a situation where they could not afford to provide support to the 370,000 people with lower levels of need. But local government minister, Phil Woolas, blasted the report's claims, stating they were ‘untrue and unhelpful'. ‘If local government wants to be a partner in governance and the delivery of services with national government, it has to talk the language of balanced books, and not that of a pressure group,' said Mr Woolas. ‘These claims tell us more about the LGA's perennial tactics in bidding for more money than they do about what is happening on the ground.' At this week's County Councils Network conference, he added it was a ‘misrepresentation' to say budgets were under-funded. ‘The solution is not to increase resources year on year,' he said. ‘I can't go to the Treasury and say the answer is even more money. Are you seriously saying we should, therefore, put up taxes.' An LGA source told The MJ the association was ‘disappointed' at Mr Woolas' comments, and accusations that it was not working in partnership with central government cut deep.
