Editorial: Services need real increases in funding

Authorities have been allocated a "coefficient" derived from the "Relative Needs Formula", which replaces the Formula Spending Share (see p10). But nobody seems to know how these coefficients work, and what figure they should be applied to.

The old youth and community sub-block now sits within children's services and it is not clear whether this figure will be itemised separately. Section 52 figures will still be collected, so at least what has been spent can be tracked, even if it may not be possible to compare that spend to original budgets.

Chancellor Gordon Brown's allocation of an extra 53m for youth and community facilities over the next two years will give local authorities an average of 500,000 to set up a youth opportunity fund from April. And money for facilities from the redistribution of unclaimed assets in banks will eventually inject hundreds of millions of pounds into the sector. But that is unlikely to start trickling through until 2007 (see p8).