Written evidence from the Local Government Association [CCI0074]

I am writing to you following our shortened inquiry session on Community cohesion on Wednesday 19 March to share some further evidence that the Local Government Association (LGA) did not have time to make:

Local government finance

Councils play a crucial role in promoting community cohesion, reducing reoffending, combatting anti-social behaviour, tackling knife crime and countering extremism. But councils need resources, alongside reform of the partnership landscape, to best deliver their role. The Government should establish a long-term, unified funding stream for community safety for three to five years, directly allocated to councils or Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs). This funding should increase CSP capacities, including analytics, wardens, and CCTV, with local discretion on usage. The Government should also reform the CSP landscape to ensure they have adequate powers, and fund preventative services to address childhood adversity and poor mental health.

Councils are under severe financial strain. Inflation, wage pressures and growing demand and complexity of need mean that councils face a funding gap of £1.9 billion in 2025/26, rising to £4.0 billion in 2026/27, £6.0 billion in 2027/28, and £8.4 billion in 2028/29. The sector’s current financial pressures are deep-rooted and have been driven by a mix of long-standing funding reductions and cost and demand pressures. Councils’ core revenue funding has begun to rise in recent years, but we estimate that Core Spending Power is still 16.4 per cent lower in real terms in 2025/26 compared to 2010/11 (excluding the National Insurance contributions compensation funding announced in February 2025).

But the savings councils have had to make since 2010/11 are not solely due to funding reductions. Councils have also had to deal with growing demand and more complex patterns of need. We estimate that if council net service spending in 2010/11 had grown in line with inflation, wage growth and demographic and demand drivers it would have been £82.8 billion by 2022/23 – 42 per cent higher than actual service spend in that year. This means that councils have made £24.5 billion worth of cuts or efficiencies to their net service spending from 2010/11 to 2022/23.

A broader range of council services, such as youth services, youth offending programmes, mental health support, family services and early childhood services, can help prevent crime and reduce future offending, improving outcomes for children and families and ultimately saving costs in the criminal justice system. Investment in these services addresses root causes, improves outcomes for residents and prevents costly long-term interventions.

Special Interest Group on Countering Extremism (SIGCE)

The LGA supports the SIGCE. Their work is vital in the recovery from the violent disorder witnessed across England in the summer of 2024. The group shares intelligence and best practice on countering extremism and building resilient communities. The annual cost is £30,000 per annum, formerly met by the Home Office. The Government should work with councils to help areas recover from recent social disorder by:

Ensuring continuity of or increasing the current asylum funding for councils.
Providing funding to support the production of cohesion strategies and projects.

Data

The LGA hosts LG Inform, which pulls together lots of relevant data. This is funded by MHCLG for councils, and officials in the Department are increasingly using it themselves. It is always possible to have more and better data, but a measure of cohesion is difficult to design, and we want to work with Government on that. However, it is essential that we avoid a position where councils are judged on simplistic metrics, in some kind of cohesion league table. This approach would incentivise councils to do what gets measured, which is a particularly inappropriate approach for cohesion, as the challenges present in radically different ways in different places.

Public services

During the session, I mentioned the fantastic interfaith Iftars I have in Barnet, including one hosted by Middlesex University in partnership with the multifaith forum and the Council, and particularly referenced one the previous evening for women hosted by Almanaar Mosque for Nisa Nashim, the Muslim and Jewish Women’s organisation. Everything councils do contributes to cohesion and the running down of public services threatens cohesion by encouraging people to see ‘other’ groups as competing for scarce resources, paving the way for extremist narratives. While we welcome funding for cohesion, that funding needs to come on top of the money required to maintain effective local services, as it will be wasted if it is simply used to deal with consequences of their decline or removal.

People are feeling left behind. LGA annual resident satisfaction surveys show that the share of respondents that are satisfied with council service provision has fallen for every service area in the survey between 2016/17 and 2023/24. Satisfaction levels for each service have generally fallen by between 3 and 16 percentage points since 2016/17. Cost and demand pressures faced by councils must be addressed. Key issues include:

Council spend is increasingly concentrated on fewer services and on fewer people: As resources have diminished, councils have protected services such as social care (adult and children’s) where there are clearly defined statutory responsibilities. This means councils are less able to support local and national agendas on key issues such as housing, economic growth, the cost-of-living crisis, and climate change.

Growing concerns over the quality and scale of service provision: Due to financial pressures councils are struggling to provide the services their residents need:

In children’s social care, there is evidence that due to market pressures some councils have no choice but to continue using unregulated placements for under 16-year-olds in care. Ofsted recently stated that, “the national shortage of placements for children with complex needs means some particularly vulnerable children live in these settings for long periods”.

In adult social care, as of 31 March 2024, 418,029 people were waiting for an assessment, the commencement of their care package or direct payment, or a review of their care plan.

There are increasing costs of homelessness services with multiple contributory cost and demand drivers, including asylum and resettlement issues and an insufficient supply of affordable housing. Councils’ budgeted net spend on homelessness services has increased by £604 million (77.4 per cent) in real terms from 2019/20 to 2024/25.

Reduced spend on preventative services: The growing share of council spending focussed on statutory obligations has also led to a greater focus on reactive, demand-led spending, such as on temporary

Guidance

The LGA and Belong are working together using MHCLG funding to produce guidance and training around cohesion strategies and tackling disinformation. This work is at an early stage but it is clear that councils that have strong links into communities are better able to promote cohesion and challenge extremists. These links can only benefit from good relationships with the voluntary sector. Councillors have a vital role to play as do dedicated cohesion officers in councils.

Further information

There is also interesting learning from the Home Office’s ‘Clear, Hold, Build’ (CHB) initiative, on holding and building communities against the cohesion challenges posed by serious organised crime. For more details on the initiative please see:

Thank you again for inviting the LGA to give evidence, and we look forward to the Committee’s final report.

Should you need any further support or assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out.

With best wishes,

Cllr Sara Conway

LGA Community Cohesion Champion and Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Resident Participation at Barnet London Borough Council

April 2025