Every penny the city council receives from council tax is now spent on social care, leaving services close to breaking point, council leader Warren Morgan warned today.
A new analysis of council budgets nationally published today has found that for every £1 of council tax collected by councils in 2019/20, 56p will be spent on caring for elderly, vulnerable adults and children, up from 41p in 2010/11.
But in Brighton and Hove, the spend on social services already outstrips the revenue from council tax, leaving other services such as roads, refuse and regulation relying on other sources such as parking income, business rates and other fees and charges.
The council still receives some money from central government, but over the past few years this has been cut from £100million to zero by 2020 – and central government takes half the city’s business rates.
Cllr Morgan said: “All of the money we receive from council tax paid by residents goes on social care. That’s services for older people, people with disabilities, children in care and those with mental health or substance misuse issues.
“It is an unsustainable position. Beyond social care we provide Brighton and Hove residents with around 700 other services. Until now the costs of providing those services, from cleaning the streets to ensuring the takeaway food you buy won’t poison you, was paid for by council tax, business rates and government grant.
“The Government have cut that grant entirely, £100m in our case by 2020, and taken half of our business rate income. We are, as I say in a letter this week to Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid, at breaking point. They cannot continue to give us new costs and responsibilities without the funding to deal with them.”
The analysis was undertaken by the Local Government Association (LGA), which warns that money to fund vital day-to-day local services is running out fast.
By 2020, local government in England will have lost 75 pence out of every £1 of Revenue Support Grant funding that it received from government to spend in 2015. Almost half of all councils – 168 councils, including Brighton and Hove – will no longer receive any of this core central government funding by 2019/20.
Government plans to allow local government as a whole to keep all of its business rates income by the end of the decade are in doubt after the Local Government Finance Bill, which was passing through parliament before the election, was not reintroduced in the Queen’s Speech.
The LGA says this has led to real and growing uncertainty about how local services are going to be funded beyond 2020.
As part of its Autumn Budget submission, the LGA said local government must first and foremost be allowed to keep all of the business rates it collects locally each year to plug growing funding gaps. A fairer system of distributing funding between councils is also needed.
However, councils are clear that keeping more business rates income on its own will not be enough to sustainably fund local services in the long-term. The LGA said the Government needs to set out how it intends to further fund councils to meet future inflation and demand for services, such as social care and homelessness, into the next decade and beyond.
Cllr Claire Kober, Chair of the LGA’s Resources Board, said: “Demand for services caring for adults and children continues to rise but core funding from central government to councils continues to go down. This means councils have no choice but to squeeze budgets from other services, such as roads, street lighting and bus services to cope.
“Within two years, more than half of the council tax everyone pays may have to be spent on adult social care and children’s services. Councils will be asking people to pay similar levels of council tax while at the same time, warning communities that the quality and quantity of services they enjoy could drop.
“Local government in England faces a £5.8 billion funding gap by 2020. Even if councils stopped filling potholes, maintaining parks and open spaces, closed all children’s centres, libraries, museums, leisure centres, turned off every street light and shut all discretionary bus routes they still would not have saved enough money to plug this gap in just two years.
“An extra £1.3 billion is also needed right now just to stabilise the perilously fragile care provider market.
“The Government must recognise that councils cannot continue without sufficient and sustainable resources. Local government must be able to keep every penny of taxation raised locally to plug funding gaps and pay for the vital local services our communities rely on.
“With the right funding and powers, local government can play a vital role in supporting central government to deliver its ambitions for everyone in our country.”
Well, perhaps Warren (and the rest of the council) could look at raising revenues in creative ways and making sure all social spend is critically reviewed rather than wasting money on projects that fail to deliver (such as throwing money at Hove Library)?
For a start, how about making the city a place that is clean and tidy and a pleasure to visit rather than seemingly wanting visitors to go elsewhere.
Are there ways that current assets (such as museums and libraries) could be more commercially driven rather than bring not-for-profit?
That’s tinkering around the edges – to lose £100m from a budget is catastrophic; for the council to be functioning at all is testament to the hard work they put in.
To make libraries pay to use would be disasterous for local people.
If the Council are still receiving some money from The Government how can it be zero?
Also why are the Government not paying Benefits and Nursing Care Cllr Morgan instead of the Council? Where has the £10m that was left over from the Sale of Kings House gone after paying for the supposed improvements at Hove Town Hall?
Please do not criticize hove library.
Why not.? As a hove resident and user of both hove library and hove museum I find it odd why most are so up in arms about putting them both under the same roof. Pretty much most of the downstairs of the museum is pointless and wasted space and the library building is far too big. Combine the two, save on overheads and wage bills and make them both better! All the small savings eventually add up.