Early help and crisis support services hit by draft council funding settlement
Joe Lepper
Friday, December 19, 2014
Local authority early intervention and crisis support services look set to bear the brunt of cuts to the funding that councils receive from government.
In announcing the draft funding package for councils in 2015/16, local government minister Kris Hopkins confirmed that the amount allocated for local early intervention services would fall by £141m next year.
The proposed cut in early intervention funding amounts to 8.9 per cent of the current spending level, resulting in the budget falling from £1.576bn in 2014/15 to £1.435bn in 2015/16.
The Local Government Association (LGA) said the cuts risked leaving councils short of money to pay for early support for children, young people and families.
“Cutting core funding is counter-productive and will lead to significant cost pressures in the longer term due to increased demand for more costly lifelong interventions,” the LGA said.
In addition, money for local welfare assistance schemes for vulnerable families, which are emergency grants to support families on low income with one-off costs such as replacing a broken cooker or fleeing domestic violence, will be slashed from £172m to £129.6m.
The funding for local welfare assistance schemes, which succeeded the Social Fund in 2013, will also not be ringfenced, the government confirmed.
Children’s Society chief executive Matthew Reed, said the reduction “will make it harder for councils to support vulnerable families facing a crisis”.
He added: “The requirement that town halls fund their schemes from within existing budgets may create a postcode lottery for many families in poverty.”
Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) also condemned the funding cut and lack of ringfencing for the schemes, which was under threat of being scrapped altogether earlier in the year.
CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said: “It’s good that the government is now acknowledging the importance of local welfare assistance schemes.
“But the bottom line is that, at a time when councils are facing unprecedented cuts to their budgets, the government must know that the only way to ensure people in acute need can receive emergency assistance is to provide specific budgets that cannot be used by councils for anything else.”
Funding for free travel for children and young people has also been cut from £25m this year to £19m in 2015/16.
Overall councils face an average cut of 1.8 per cent in the funding grant settlement for 2015/16, with the government pledging no council will face a cut of more than 6.4 per cent.
Hopkins has described the latest settlement as “fair”. He added: “Every council should be able to deliver sensible savings while protecting frontline services for local taxpayers.”