If the Government doesn’t make changes, this could happen to ‘Your Waverley.
As two-thirds of councils across England now reveal their finances are in a parlous state, this is essential reading if the residents of Waverley care about the areas in which they live.
The State of Local Government Finance in England published by the Local Government Information Service.
This report, the 11th annual state of local government finance survey in England, tells a story that is both familiar and distinctive.
It is a familiar story of councils struggling to deliver essential services with inadequate funding, pulling all the levers available to make ends meet, increasing numbers of councils falling into effective bankruptcy, and residents paying more to get less.
But this year, there is a difference. The balance has tipped, and this report, for the first time, demonstrates how widespread the desperate funding situation for councils is! More than half of respondents warned that they will now face bankruptcy in the next five years if nothing changes.
Find out more about our local government finance research:
Funding systems for local Government – international comparisons
Local Authorities should have read the HM Treasury Green Book and listened to their S151 Officers.
The Green Book is guidance issued by HM Treasury on how to appraise policies, programmes and projects.
“Optimism bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for appraisers to be over-optimistic about key project parameters, including capital costs, operating costs, project duration and benefits delivery. The Green Book recommends applying specific adjustments for this at the outset of an appraisal. Optimism bias estimates are a form of reference class forecasting, which predicts future outcomes based on the outcomes for a group of similar past projects.” However it appears that the Supreme Courts’ “expertise” in job grading made a major contribution to Birmingham’s woes.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-green-book-appraisal-and-evaluation-in-central-government/the-green-book-2020#a5-uncertainty-optimism-bias-and-risk.
We should all be asking candidates in the forthcoming parliamentary election where their party stands on local government financing.