Local Government Secretary, Eric Pickles, today published new figures showing exactly how much town halls have to spend for each resident. He encouraged local taxpayers to go compare and ask how their money is being spent this year.
Revenue Spending Power per head, 2011-12
- Full size map (pdf, 1330 kb)
The average spending figure is equivalent to councils spending over £1,000 for every resident in their area.
The new figures and 'spending heat map' reveal councils' revenue spending across England will be almost £53 billion this year to spend on services, despite the need to reduce the inherited budget deficit.
Almost a quarter (78) of councils covering 37 per cent of the population - including Newcastle, Wolverhampton, Torbay and Liverpool - have over £1,000 for every resident living in their boundaries.
The overall figures for revenue spending power per resident for the current year (2011-12) shows 19 per cent (63) of councils receive over £1,050 per resident, 62 per cent (200) receive between £830 and £1,050 and only 19 per cent (63) receive below £830.
The Government has already published similar maps showing the council tax per head contribution and how much councils receive in central government grant per head.
Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said:
"The public knows that councils - and indeed central government - can deliver far better for value money. It's not how much you spend, but how you spend it.
"This is not to say that making the savings to council budgets won't be challenging for councillors and council officers. It's very easy to salami-slice budgets or cut the frontline first. But that's the easy option. It's harder - but better - to deliver transformational change, finding new ways of working. Transparency is at that heart of that process."
On the spending figures, he added:
"Despite the need to pay off the budget deficit, councils are spending £53 billion this year, equivalent to an average of £1,000 for every man, woman and child. Local taxpayers should now go compare and check they are receiving value for money for the spend they get.
"The poorest areas receive the most money. But some of the councils with the best services receive the least. Whether you live in north and south, rural and urban, metropolitan and shire, what people want to see is value for money."
Note for editors
1. Two of the main sources of council revenue are:
- Council tax, which accounts for quarter of all revenue. Council tax varies according to the property values of each area - with more affluent areas and bigger homes paying more. The Government helped councils freeze council tax this year. It has also ruled out a council tax revaluation in this Parliament, as it could have meant soaring bills for millions for homes. In the 2005 revaluation in Wales, four times as many homes moved up one or more bands as down.
- A complex central government formula, which fairly distributes £29.4 billion in grant. February's Local Government Finance Settlement was structured so areas most dependant on formula grant received the lion's share of that central government funding while those collecting more council tax tended to receive less. This creates a fairer system between different parts of the country - north and south, rural and urban, metropolitan and shire.
2. £52.7 billion of council revenue around the country is distributed per head of population to give a national average (using the England figure of 51,809,741) of £1017. The overall spending power figures were published in January 2011. The methodology and detailed spreadsheets are available on our website at: www.local.communities.gov.uk/finance/1112/grant.htm (external link).
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a table showing average revenue spending power per head for 2011-12 can be found here:
www.communities.gov.uk/documents/newsroom/1786823/1904890.xls (MS Excel, 44 kb) -
a council 'heat map' showing average revenue spending per head for 2011-12 can be found here:
www.communities.gov.uk/documents/newsroom/pdf/1904897.pdf (PDF, 1330 kb)
These figures use the estimated 2011-12 Revenue Spending Power (including Transition Grant) as available on the DCLG website. The per capita figures are based on ONS's mid-2009 population estimates, which are the most up to date currently available.
3. The 78 councils over the £1000 mark are as follows: www.communities.gov.uk/documents/newsroom/1786823/1904902.xls (MS Excel, 18 kb).
4. £26.5 billion of council tax requirement collected around the country is distributed per head of population. The national average is £511.
- a table showing average council tax per head for 2011-12 can be found here: www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/xls/1886330.xls (MS Excel, 104 kb)
- a council tax 'heat map' showing average council tax per head for 2011-12 can be found here: www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/1886288.pdf (PDF, 1008 kb)
5. Figures showing how the £29.4 billion of central taxpayer funding for local government distributed around the country is allocated per head for each council. The national average is £409.
- a table showing formula grant funding per head for 2011-12 can be found here: www.communities.gov.uk/documents/newsroom/1786823/1804766.xls (MS Excel, 246 kb)
- a map showing formula grant funding per head for 2011-12 can be found here: www.communities.gov.uk/documents/newsroom/pdf/1804871.pdf (PDF, 102 kb)
PDF version The Treasury today published the Public Expenditure Outturn White Paper (Cm 8133) showing provisional outturn spending for Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL) and Annually Managed Expenditure (AME) in 2010-11. It also includes information on individual Supply Estimates (the means by which Parliament approves spending) and administration budget limits.
The overall position for 2010-11 shows provisional outturn for Resource DEL (RDEL) excluding depreciation of £325.1 billion resources. The capital DEL outturn was £50.0 billion.
Notes for Editors
1. HM Treasury reports provisional outturn spending annually to Parliament through the Public Expenditure Outturn White Paper. This includes provisional outturn for voted spending, RDEL (including and excluding depreciation), AME and administration budgets.
2. All figures are reported on the basis of the parliamentary and administrative controls in place during 2010-11. They are therefore prepared on a different basis to numbers in Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA) 2011 (Cm 8104), also published today. Data in PESA are reported against the control regime for 2011-12, which incorporates changes, such as machinery of government changes from 1 April 2011 onwards, and the expansion of the administration budget regime to include Arm’s Length Bodies.
3. PEOWP can be found here: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/peowp201011.pdf
Non-media enquiries should be addressed to the Treasury Correspondence and Enquiry Unit on 020 7270 4558 or by e-mail to public.enquiries@hmtreasury.gsi.gov.uk
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What is a Community Budget?
A Community Budget gives local public service partners the freedom to work together to redesign services around the needs of citizens, improving outcomes and reducing duplication and waste.
Too often a resident's experience of local public services is one of frustration at the complexity, fragmentation and difficulty finding a way through the bureaucracy. Delivering excellent, joined up, services to people must be our goal. The Community Budget approach is a powerful new way to address this.
A successful Community Budget will be able to deliver a better service to residents because it can:
- make better use of its resources, including pooling the budgets of all agencies where it is effective to do so
- free local professionals from central rules and regulations that are getting in the way so they can redesign services delivery so it is more effective for residents
- establish appropriate local partnership and governance arrangements to create a unified approach that suits their area.
What has been achieved so far?
The first major milestone for Community Budgets has been achieved. 16 areas (28 authorities - 20 per cent of English councils) are taking forward their proposals to turn around the lives of families with multiple problems using the Community Budget approach.
Within only six months they have set themselves up and have plans to deal with at least 10,000 problem families over four years.
They are:
- Birmingham
- Blackburn-with-Darwen
- Blackpool
- Bradford
- Essex
- Greater Manchester (a group of 10 councils)
- Hull
- Kent
- Leicestershire
- Lincolnshire
- London Borough of Barnet
- London Borough of Croydon
- London Borough of Islington
- London Borough of Lewisham
- West London Boroughs (a group of four councils)
- Swindon
Why the focus on Families with Multiple Problems?
These families can be much more costly to public services if their problems are not addressed early on.
Around 40-50,000 families experience multiple social, economic and health as well as serious child problems whilst a larger group, possibly around 70,000, are at a much greater risk of developing these problems. The needs of these families (and the problems they can caused others) can be so great that up to 20 different professionals costing up to £250-£350,000 can be involved in trying to help them. In December 2010 the Prime Minister announced that his ambition was to try to turn around the lives of the most troubled families by the end of this Parliament. For more information, see 'On other sites', top right.
What next?
On 28 June 2011 the Deputy Prime Minister announced a programme that will roll out Community Budgets more widely and explore how this approach might be extended to wider issues in local areas (see 'On this site' top right). This is part of a review the government carried out into Local Government Resources.
Work will be taken forward on three fronts:
- we intend to make Community Budgets for families with multiple problems available to more areas: around 50 more local authorities this year and at least 60 more in 2012-13
- we want to support other local areas to use the Community Budget approach beyond families with multiple problems
- we're going to run two radical experiments that we need your help with. These will be based on all funding for local public services in a local area, including giving neighbourhoods more influence.
Further information can be found in the Q&A (see 'Related downloads').
How can local areas get involved?
Ministers have written to all Local Authority Leaders inviting interested councils to come forward. More details will be announced later in the year (see 'Related downloads' below).
What is the Government doing to support Community Budgets?
All Whitehall Departments have been working with the first 16 Community Budget areas for families with multiple problems, and are fully committed to the roll out of this agenda.
Departments are actively supporting the community budget agenda through:
- a cross Government Ministerial Group chaired by the Secretary of State
- a regular Community Budget Political Leadership Group chaired by Communities Minister Baroness Hanham
- a senior officials group chaired by Lord Michael Bichard
- 16 senior Whitehall Champions - one for each of the 16 first phase areas.
How can I find out more?
A letter from the Permanent Secretary sets out the full range of Community Budget activities and the opportunities to get involved (see 'Related downloads' below).
The Local Government Group have a Community Budgets website (see 'On other sites' top right) and issue regular bulletins highlighting developments and support. Email john.jarvis@local.gov.uk to join the mailing list.
Related downloads
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Q&A on Community Budgets
PDF, 34 kb, 3 pages
Do you need help viewing file formats?
Related publications
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Letter from Sir Bob Kerslake about Community Budgets
- Published: 28 July 2011
- Site: Local government
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Letter from Baroness Hanham and Tim Loughton about Community Budgets
- Published: 7 July 2011
- Site: Local government
http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/decentralisation/community...
Cut and dried? What’s the real impact of the government cuts to the UK voluntary and community sector?
There’s been a lot of talk about the impact of the cuts on the voluntary sector in the press recently. But are we really all lambs to the slaughter? As we all return to work after the summer holidays and survey the future, Dr Catherine Walker, DSC's Head of STEAM, asks: Does the evidence about cuts back up all the scary rhetoric?
We hear constantly that the double knock of the continuing recession plus government cuts have hit many charities hard, but it’s very difficult to get an accurate picture of exactly what is going on across the sector as a whole.
Last month (August), the trade union-backed website ‘False Economy’ published a report 'False Economy: Why cuts are the wrong cure' [external website] based on Freedom of Information requests which estimated that the voluntary sector will lose at least £110m in local authority funding this year.
NCVO’s ‘Counting the Cuts’ report [external website] suggests that this is a massive understatement and that if one includes central government department cuts this total is probably nearer £2.8 billion over the next five years.
Two regional studies recently published studies of the charities in their areas. LVCS', London’s Voluntary and Community Sector, Big Squeeze campaign [external website] reports over half (51%) of the voluntary organisations they surveyed have had to close services over the last year and 54% expected further service closures over the next year, while 81% had experienced higher than usual demand for their services
Voluntary Organisations’ Network North East's (VONNE) 6-monthly results of their ‘Surviving or Thriving’ survey [external website] revealed that, with 81% of respondents sourcing some, or all, of their income from public sector grants, 73% have seen a decrease in funding, 40% have lost staff, and 59% have experienced an increase in demand for their service, leading 64% to dip into their reserves to cover costs.
Of course self-selected, smallscale (both the VONNE and LVCS surveys consisted of 120 organisations) survey responses should be treated with some care, but they can be seen as at least indicative of what’s happening to some in the sector.
As always in the sector, getting meaningful evidence is very difficult, and as we noted in last month’s e-news piece on open data, the current Government’s decision to axe a number of surveys of the voluntary sector may mean that piecing together and prising apart the effects of the cuts and the recession will probably be further hampered.
The deepest cuts
What is becoming evident is that, as NCVO point out: “There is considerable evidence that cuts are not being applied consistently, proportionately or strategically.” And certainly NCVO’s analysis of the local government spending settlement shows that local authority areas with higher deprivation scores are facing bigger cuts. This is also borne out by LVCS’s survey.
Since new research [pdf document] from the University of Southampton shows that charities in deprived areas are less numerous and more likely to receive statutory funding, it seems apparent that already less-well-served areas will be disproportionately hit by cuts.
Furthermore, according to LVCS: “preventative services are being disproportionately cut especially in advice, children & young people and health services”.
Since employment and training charities are reliant on statutory sources for 70% of their income; and educational, housing and social services charities receive around 50% of their income from statutory sources (NCVO Almanac 2010); such cuts are likely to be storing up problems for the future.
The wider impact may have a silver lining
Charities are reporting that the global recession has increased demand for their services and many say they are struggling to survive a decrease in their income. However, it is hard to establish, from the evidence provided, how much of the sector this is actually affecting.
Is this the end of the voluntary and community sector as some commentators are warning?
In our view, definitely not. The formalised voluntary sector has been around for hundreds of years and we’ve survived recessions, world wars and governments before. But will it spell change? Possibly; and there are those within and without the voluntary sector, DSC included, who have said that losing government money may turn out to be a good thing for the sector in some ways.
Commentators as disparate as Harry Cole, Editor of the rightwing Guido Fawkes Blog [external website], and Rob Dyson (Whizz-Kidz & Guardian blogger) have both concluded that if a charity can’t survive such modest cuts they’re probably unsustainable anyway and that we need to diversity our income streams. In hard times, survival of the fittest makes the whole species stronger, and the reality is that a cause is unlikely to die with the closure of a charity.
But, while some are worrying about shearing the sheep so close to the skin that they sometimes get nicked, what they forget are the plain facts about the make-up of the voluntary sector: Nearly eight out of ten charities have no financial relationship with the state whatsoever.
Only 36% of the UK voluntary sector’s total income comes from the state and even that only equates to about 2% of total government spending. Some 4000 larger charities out of 180,000 are really the only ones directly affected by statutory cuts. For the rest of us, it’s pretty much business as usual.
Where next for the voluntary sector?
So what does all this mean in practice? Well, for starters, we need to stop being so fearful of the future. The majority of voluntary sector organisations will survive any statutory cuts – either because we don’t get state funding in the first place or because we are not solely reliant on it.
Secondly, many charities can and should use this as an opportunity to really seriously think about diversifying income sources. I am oddly reminded of a poem by Robert Cecil Day-Lewis which ends with the lines: “How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.”
Perhaps the Government’s tough love for the voluntary sector will be the making of our independence?
http://www.dsc.org.uk/PolicyandResearch/News/CutanddriedWhatstherealimpa...
Councils, government departments and bodies like the NHS could be required to consider "social value" - as well as cost - when awarding contracts.
The plans are part of a private member's bill put forward by Conservative MP Chris White.
He says it would apply to any public services or works, such as the construction of buildings and railways.
The bill has cross-party support, but Labour have accused the government of cutting some of its key clauses.
If it becomes law, it would also apply to police, fire and rescue authorities and even the House of Commons itself, and cover services like accounting, auditing and advertising, the provision of education, care and recreation facilities, and the commissioning of works like fire alarm systems.
Treasury publishes unaudited summary of first ever Whole of Government Accounts
The Treasury has today published an unaudited summary of the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) for the year 2009-10. The Government made available the key balance sheet analysis contained in this summary to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to enhance their analysis of the sustainability of the public finances in their first ever Fiscal Sustainability Report, also published today.
This is the first ever set of publication of information for the whole of the public sector, covering over 1,500 public bodies, and has been 10 years in the making. The full, audited accounts will be published in the autumn and will be the most ambitious in scope produced in any country.
The publication of this summary represents a leap in the transparency of reporting the Government’s future liabilities. It represents a snapshot of the Government’s financial position on a commercial accounts basis. Its aim is to enable Parliament and the public better to understand and scrutinise how taxpayers’ money is spent.
While the new information it presents does not affect the fiscal position, the analysis it includes on, for example,Private Finance Initiative (PFI ) and public service pension liabilities makes clear the scale of the fiscal challenge the Government faced before the June 2010 Budget.
The Accounts show that the public service pension liabilities as of 09/10 were £1.1 trillion pounds.
They also show that PFI capital liabilities as of 09/10 were over £35 billion. The OBR’s assessment in their Fiscal Sustainability Report is that these liabilities relate to about 90 per cent of all operational PFI assets, which suggest the total capital liability was closer to £40billion. The difference arises due to the internationally recognised accountancy standards used in WGA
Welcoming the publication of the OBR’s report and commenting on the publication of the WGA, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said:
“The information published today by the Treasury and the OBR represents a step change in transparency , lifting the lid on the liabilities built up in the past and the pressures we face in the future. They show that our deficit and reform plans are not just right for the economy now, but also right for the economy and fair for the country in the future.”
Notes for Editors
1. The unaudited summary of the Whole of Government Accounts for 2009-10 is available on the Treasury website:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/psr_government_accounts.htm
2. The full, audited accounts will be published later this year.
3. The Government announced the creation of an independent Office for Budget Responsibility in 2010 to provide independent and authoritative analysis of the UK’s public finances. As part of this role, the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011 requires the OBR to produce “an analysis of the sustainability of the public finances” once a year. The OBR’s first Fiscal Sustainability Report has been published today and is available on the OBR’s website:
http://budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/
Background to the WGA
4. Parliament originally requested consolidated accounts for central government as long ago as the 1994-95 parliamentary session. In July 1997, the Treasury agreed to look at the feasibility of such accounts. The resulting 1998 scoping study concluded that producing consolidated accounts for the whole public sector was the best way to proceed and that this would bring benefits for both government and external users.
5. The commitment to produce WGA was initially made in the Code for Fiscal Stability , following this report. This commitment became a statutory requirement through the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 (GRAA), which created the requirement for Treasury to annually prepare WGA . While the GRAA created an obligation for Treasury to prepare WGA, it left the timetable for publication to be set at a later date.
6. The initial aim was to produce an audited account covering the central government sector for the 2005-06 year. This was delayed until 2007-08 when the scope of the account was extended to include local government, NHS and public corporations. Publication was then further delayed when it was agreed that central government departments would move to IFRS. In the 2008 Budget, the then Chancellor announced that WGA would be published for 2009-10, in line with the move to IFRS in the central government sector.
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