Just days before many councils set their most difficult budgets in years – and many months after the LGA warned that soaring demand for social care and temporary accommodation was posing an existential risk to council budgets – the Government has finally backtracked on its catastrophic provisional local government finance settlement for 2024/25 and announced £600 million in extra funding.
The bottom line is that this emergency handout is an admission of total failure from an increasingly chaotic Conservative government that has sole responsibility for pushing so many local councils to breaking point over the past 14 years.
“An increasingly chaotic Conservative government has sole responsibility for pushing so many local councils to breaking point”
Many local councils are caught in a doom spiral, forced to raid already stretched budgets for basic services to find millions of pounds to pay for growing crises in homelessness and social care that have their roots in Conservative policy.
The stupidity of announcing government funding allocations just weeks before the start of a new financial year leaves councils unable to plan properly for the future.
So while it would be churlish to do anything other than welcome extra funding, it is at best another stop gap – it puts another few coins in the meter, but it won’t stop the lights going out in many councils this year.
Councils are crying out for the security and stability that only a new government can deliver. The only real solution is a General Election now.