Issue(s)

Financial and service sustainability

Improving local service delivery

Parent department

Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)

Related documents

Financial sustainability of local authorities 2014 (Nov 2014)

Our report on local authority funding reiterated that government must understand the implications of funding reductions on the delivery of local services, and whether supporting local authorities to redesign selected services and join up with other local service providers would deliver the improvements and savings needed.

Impact: Our work has been instrumental in securing acknowledgement from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) that its processes for estimating local authority spending requirements and assessing the potential impacts of spending reductions need to be improved. Our report has also been widely used in the sector. For example, Leeds City Council and Birmingham City Council repeatedly drew on our work to inform their ongoing debate with central government over devolution. Other councils such as Wolverhampton City Council and Oldham Council used the report to inform discussion and decision-making in cabinet meetings and audit and scrutiny committees. More widely, commentators including the Local Government Association and treasurers' societies have used our analysis to inform their thinking, and firms such as Grant Thornton and KPMG have included substantial coverage of the work in the audit updates for many local authorities.