local government finances · 2020. 3. 5. · local government in england is handled by several...

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BRIEFING PAPER Number 08431, 23 March 2021

Local government finances

By Philip Brien

Contents: 1. Local government in England:

structures and funding processes

2. Local government finance statistics

3. Devolved administrations 4. Further reading

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2 Local government finances

Contents Summary 3

1. Local government in England: structures and funding processes 4

2. Local government finance statistics 5 2.1 Settlement funding 5 2.2 Spending power 7 2.3 Spending 12 2.4 What is the money spent on? 16

3. Devolved administrations 18 3.1 Scotland 18 3.2 Wales 18 3.3 Northern Ireland 18

4. Further reading 20 4.1 Library briefings 20 4.2 Other organisations 20

Cover image: Lancaster Town Hall Chambers, by Michael D Beckwith. Licensed under CC0 (public domain)/image cropped.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/118118485@N05/21173023340/in/album-72157641232356043/https://www.flickr.com/photos/118118485@N05/21173023340/in/album-72157641232356043/https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

3 Commons Library Briefing, 23 March 2021

Summary Local government in England is handled by several different types of local authority – in some areas it is split into two tiers (of district and county councils), while in others a single authority handles all local government responsibilities. The needs and relative deprivation of these areas vary widely, and so does the amount of money available to each.

Metropolitan districts receive more grant funding per person from central Government than any other type of local authority, while shire counties and the districts within them receive the least. These variations are considerably reduced when one instead looks at the local authorities’ core spending power, which takes into account the differing amounts of money that each authority can raise on its own behalf.

On average in England, grant funding has decreased in real terms since 2015-16 across all types of local authority, and has been largely flat since 2019-20. Spending power has decreased less on average, and as of 2020-21 it has begun to slowly increase, but there is much more variation in spending power between individual authorities than for funding.

The amounts spent per person by each local authority area show broadly similar variations to those in funding – London boroughs spend the most per person, and shire counties and districts the least. There is a large range of spending between different local authority areas, with the highest spending typically to be found in London.

Spending per person has decreased in real terms in almost all local authority areas (combining counties and districts) since 2015-16.

Local authorities mostly spend their resources on education services and adult and children’s social care – these three areas together made up well over half of local government spending in 2019-20, much of it as part of ring-fenced grants.

Similar statistics are also available for the devolved administrations of the UK, but are not covered in depth in this briefing.


1. Local government in England: structures and funding processes

Within much of England, local government responsibilities are split between two tiers. The upper tier consists of 24 county councils, while the lower tier consists of 181 district councils; each county contains several districts. In other areas, a single “unitary authority” takes on the responsibilities of both tiers; there are 129 of these, including the 32 London boroughs and 36 metropolitan districts.1

In addition to these structures, there are 29 fire and rescue authorities in England, some of which cover more than one upper-tier authority area. Similarly, there are 36 directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners in England, plus the Mayors of London and Greater Manchester (who carry out the role of PCC within their areas).

Upper- and lower-tier authorities have access to three main sources of finance:

• Council tax receipts;

• A proportion of business rates raised within the authority area;

• Funding from central government.

Local authorities also take in money in the form of fees and charges for providing services, but these offset the cost of those services rather than being used as part of their overall pool of money.

Central funding is made up of a number of different grants, several of which are bundled together into the Local Government Finance Settlement. (Authorities also receive several other grants outside this settlement, ring-fenced for specific purposes.) The calculations used to create the settlement take into account each council’s ability to raise its own revenue, in order to balance funding across authority areas and ensure that they are able to carry out services.

The above is a very brief overview; for more details, please see the Library’s briefing on Local government in England: structures.

1 This total includes the City of London and the Isles of Scilly, both of which have

unique governance structures for historical and geographical reasons. Their financial arrangements are similarly unique, making it difficult to compare them to other local authorities; they are therefore not included in any of the summary calculations in this briefing.

There are 24 county councils, 181 district councils, and 129 unitary authorities in England.

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN07104


2. Local government finance statistics

2.1 Settlement funding The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) releases annual statistics on the amount of funding provided to local authorities by central government through the finance settlement.

Source: MHCLG, Final local government finance settlement: England, 2021 to 2022, 4 February

2021; per-person figures calculated using data from ONS, Population projections - local authority

based by single year of age, via Nomis; real-terms figures calculated by smoothing the OBR’s GDP

deflator growth forecast across the years from 2019-20 to 2022-23 to remove the distortions

caused by pandemic-related factors.

The chart above shows that although settlement funding has decreased across the board since 2015-16, the amount per person varies according to the different types of local authority – metropolitan districts receive the most per person, while shire counties and districts receive the least.

This variation reflects (albeit imperfectly) the fact that different types of local authority are associated with varying needs and varying ability to raise their own revenue.2 The chart below shows how close this relationship is:

2 For more information on this, see LG Futures, Reforming Local Authority Needs

Assessment, October 2017.

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2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21 2021-22

Shire counties and districts

Different classes of authorities receive different levels of funding from central GovernmentSettlement funding to England, £ per person, adjusted for inflation

Metropolitan districts

London boroughs

Unitary authorities

Metropolitan districts receive the most central grant funding per person – shire counties and districts receive the least.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/communities-and-local-government/Reforming%20local%20authority%20needs%20assessment%20-%20full%20report.pdfhttps://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/communities-and-local-government/Reforming%20local%20authority%20needs%20assessment%20-%20full%20report.pdf



2021, and English indices of deprivation 2019, 26 September 2019

Although there are some outliers – for example, Westminster received a relatively high funding level of around £451 per person despite below-average deprivation – the most deprived local authorities also tend to be the ones that receive the most funding.3

The chart below shows changes in funding for every local authority in England for which we have data covering every year from 2015-16 to 2021-22.

3 For more information on deprivation and poverty in general, see the Library’s

briefings on Poverty in the UK: statistics and Deprivation in English constituencies, 2019.

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Sett

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Index of Multiple Deprivation average score, 2019

Knowsley

Deprived authorities receive more fundingUpper-tier local authorities in England, counties combined with districts

Wokingham

Westminster

There is a strong correlation between deprivation and levels of settlement funding.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN07096https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7327https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7327


Note: The median line indicates the point where half of authorities have higher indexed settlement

funding and half have lower – it does not follow the same authority across all years. Real-terms

figures calculated by smoothing the OBR’s GDP deflator growth forecast across the years from

2019-20 to 2022-23 to remove the distortions caused by pandemic-related factors.


2021

This indicates that the amount of central grant funding received by local authorities has decreased markedly over the last few years, and that this is mostly consistent across local authorities.4

We cannot provide consistent data going back further than 2015-16, because the set of local authority responsibilities and the set of grants that make up funding changed regularly before this point. However, in March 2018, the National Audit Office used MHCLG’s data to estimate that total funding across England was set to fall in real terms by 56.3% between 2010/11 and 2019/20.5 They also published an online visualisation which allows users to find an equivalent figure for individual local authorities.

2.2 Spending power Because of the large variations in local authorities’ ability to raise their own revenue, it can be more useful to look at estimated ‘core spending power’ – that is, the total amount of money that local authorities have

4 The two authorities where funding has decreased much less are the Isles of Scilly,

which has its level of funding set separately to all other local authorities due to its unusual geographical situation, and the Greater London Authority, which received a large increase in funding in 2017-18 reflecting changes in the collection and retention of business rates. See paragraph 1.6 of the GLA’s 2017-18 budget.

5 National Audit Office, Financial sustainability of local authorities 2018, 8 March 2018

Settlement funding has decreased in real terms for every local authority since 2015-16.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/financial-sustainability-of-local-authorities-2018-visualisation/https://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/financial-sustainability-of-local-authorities-2018-visualisation/https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/final_consolidated_budget_2017-18.pdfhttps://www.nao.org.uk/report/financial-sustainability-of-local-authorities-2018/


available to them for making decisions, taking into account their income from council tax, fees and business rates (although not including certain grants which are passed on directly to other service providers).6 Broken down by authority type, spending power over the past few years has been as follows:



based by single year of age, via Nomis; real-terms figures calculated by smoothing the OBR’s GDP

deflator growth forecast across the years from 2019-20 to 2022-23 to remove the distortions

caused by pandemic-related factors.

This chart shows that spending power fell in real terms for all classes of authority between 2015-16 and 2019-20, before starting to increase again. It also shows that there is much less variation in spending power per person between types of authority than for settlement funding. This is because those authorities which can raise more of their own revenue typically receive less central grant funding, meaning that the overall amount of money available is more evened out.

As the chart below shows, this also means that deprivation is much less strongly linked with spending power than it is with settlement funding:

6 Spending power is a Government-defined concept – its full definition and an

explanation of the methodology behind calculating it are available on gov.uk.

0100200300400500600700800900

1,000

2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21 2021-22



Unitary authorities

London boroughs

Core spending power is consistent between classes of local authorityCore spending power in England, £ per person, adjusted for inflation

Core spending power is largely consistent between classes of authority.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/core-spending-power-final-local-government-finance-settlement-2021-to-2022/explanatory-note-on-core-spending-power



2021, and English indices of deprivation 2019, 26 September 2019

Although there is still a relationship here – local authorities with low deprivation such as Windsor and Maidenhead tend to have lower spending power than those with high deprivation, like Blackpool – this relationship is much weaker than for funding, and there is considerable variation in spending power between authorities with similar levels of deprivation.

The chart below shows the relationship between funding and local authorities’ ability to raise their own revenue by looking at the amount that each authority is expected to raise in council tax – shire counties and districts, which receive the lowest levels of settlement funding, are also expected to raise the greatest proportion of their revenue in council tax. This proportion has increased for all classes of local authority.

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Index of Multiple Deprivation average score, 2019

Blackpool

Deprivation and spending power are weakly relatedUpper-tier local authorities in England, counties combined with districts

Windsor and Maidenhead

Kensington and Chelsea

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019



2021

Geographical differences in core spending power across England do not follow any obvious pattern, as can be seen from the map below.



based by single year of age, via Nomis

This map shows that most of England has fairly consistent core spending power. There are some outliers – some districts within cities

0%

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50%

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70%

80%

2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21 2021-22


Local authorities are now expected to raise more council taxCouncil tax requirement as % of core spending power, England only


London boroughs

Unitary authorities

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/


(particularly London and Liverpool) have higher spending power than others. However, even these do not show an overall geographical pattern; in particular, central London holds some of the areas with both the highest and lowest per-person figures.

Looking at the individual authorities (including the individual shire districts rather than combining them with their respective shire counties) shows that the trend in spending power over time has not been as consistent as for settlement funding. The grey lines in the chart below represent every local authority where we have a figure for core spending power in every year between 2015-16 and 2021-22.

Note: The median line indicates the point where half of authorities have higher core spending

power and half have lower – it does not follow the same authority across all years. Real-terms

figures calculated by smoothing the OBR’s GDP deflator growth forecast across the years from

2019-20 to 2022-23 to remove the distortions caused by pandemic-related factors.


2021

The overall trend for spending power has generally been a decrease until 2019-20, followed by a partial recovery. However, there is wide variation between authorities, and slightly over two-thirds of authorities (68%) are set to have real-terms spending power that is lower in 2021-22 than it was in 2015-16.

When we combine shire districts with the shire counties that contain them and plot them on a map, a somewhat different pattern emerges:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022


Note: Real-terms figures calculated by smoothing the OBR’s GDP deflator growth forecast across

the years from 2019-20 to 2022-23 to remove the distortions caused by pandemic-related factors.


2021

This map shows that rural areas (where local authorities tend to follow the shire district/shire county model) have generally seen an overall increase in core spending power, even though almost all of the individual shire districts have seen decreases. London boroughs have also generally seen decreases, the largest being -8% for Hillingdon.

2.3 Spending The amount actually spent by each local authority – as opposed to the amount of funding available to them – is reported back by each authority to MHCLG, which then publishes these figures in its Local authority revenue expenditure and financing data. These figures are typically significantly higher than those for core spending power from the previous section. This is because spending power is a Government-defined concept, designed to measure the amount of resource that local authorities can use to make decisions – much of the money that the authorities spend does not come under this heading, but is instead simply passed directly on to service providers (such as schools or the police). This means that such spending does not count as part of authorities’ funding or their spending power; it also means that figures

Total spending by local authorities is not comparable to core spending power (which is a Government-defined concept).

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2021-to-2022https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financinghttps://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing


for core spending power and actual spending are not directly comparable.

Local authorities are also not obliged to spend all of the money that they receive in a given year, and can end up spending more than they receive if they either pay into or draw on their reserves. However, spending more than they receive is not an indication of an authority borrowing money, as local authorities are not permitted to borrow to cover day-to-day spending.

Analysis of MHCLG’s spending figures allows us to break down spending by type of authority.

Source: MHCLG, Local authority revenue expenditure and financing data, 21 January 2021

As with the breakdown for funding and spending power, shire counties (and the districts within them) spend less per person than any other class of authority (87% of the overall average), while London boroughs spend more than any other class (129% of the national average).

Looking at spending by each area individually (again with shire counties and districts combined) gives us the following map:

2,196

1,832

1,625

1,481

1,703

London boroughs


Unitary authorities


All authorities

Local government spending, by class of authority£ per person, England only, 2019-20

Shire counties and districts spend the least per person; London boroughs spend the most.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing-england-2019-to-2020-individual-local-authority-data-outturn


Source: MHCLG, Local authority revenue expenditure and financing data

This shows that the highest spending per person is generally found within London, and much of the lowest is to be found in the Midlands. Some of the unitary authorities and metropolitan districts around Manchester and Liverpool also see relatively high spending.

Since 2015-16, spending by all types of local authorities has decreased, as can be seen in the chart below.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing





The decrease in spending has not been entirely uniform across classes of authority, with the largest percentage decreases between 2015-16 and 2019-20 in London boroughs (-14%) and the smallest in unitary authorities (-9%).

The chart does show that some classes of local authorities have seen increases in spending in some years. However, spending per person has decreased overall in real terms for almost all authorities between 2015-16 and 2019-20, as can be seen from the map below:

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Spending by all classes of authority has fallen£ per person, real terms (2020-21 prices), England only, net revenue spending


Unitary authorities


Spending has decreased in most local authority areas since 2015-16.






There is no obvious pattern as to where spending has decreased the most. The largest decrease was in Bromley (-36%), where a very large proportion of schools have been converted to academies and are therefore no longer funded by the local authority (see next section). The only one of these authorities to see an increase in spending was South Gloucestershire, at +2%.7

2.4 What is the money spent on? In 2019-20, local authorities in England had a net current expenditure of £95 billion. This money was spent on the following services:

7 As with many other statistics in this briefing, the City of London and the Isles of

Scilly are the exceptions to the rule, at +14% and -37% respectively.




Education services make up the largest area of spending, followed by adult and children’s social care and policing.

As noted earlier, much of the spending by local authorities takes the form of ring-fenced grants, such as the Dedicated Schools Grant. Much of the above spending breakdown therefore reflects more of the allocations that authorities receive from central Government than of the spending decisions that they make.

There has been considerable variation between sectors in terms of changes in spending since 2015-16. Across England as a whole, total spending on services fell by 4.3% in real terms between 2015-16 and 2019-20, but spending on education services fell by 12.4% over the same period (probably partly due to schools becoming academies and no longer receiving local authority funding), while spending on social care rose by 9.6% and 7.7% for children and adults respectively.8

Differences in sectors may explain much of the variation between local authorities – for example, Bromley’s large decrease in overall spending (mentioned in the previous section) is partly due to its unusually large decrease in spending on education services (-68.9%), as it is one of the local authorities with the highest rates of academisation.9

8 Library calculations, based on MHCLG, Local authority revenue expenditure and

financing data; real-terms figures calculated by smoothing the OBR’s GDP deflator growth forecast across the years from 2019-20 to 2022-23 to remove the distortions caused by pandemic-related factors.

9 Bromley had the highest rate of academisation in England (93%) according to the NAO’s 2018 report Converting maintained schools to academies.

Local authority spending, by service type2019-20, £ billions, England only

Education services 32.6Highways and transport services 3.8Children Social Care 9.9Adult Social Care 16.9Public Health 3.2Housing services (GFRA only) 1.8Cultural and related services 2.2Environmental and regulatory services 5.1Planning and development services 1.4Police services 12.2Fire and rescue services 2.2Central services 3.2Other services 0.0Total 94.6

Education and social care make up by far the largest areas of spending.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financinghttps://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financinghttps://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financinghttps://www.nao.org.uk/report/converting-maintained-schools-to-academies/


3. Devolved administrations Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different local government structures and funding to those in England. Their finance statistics are therefore also different, and cannot be meaningfully compared with the statistics for England (or, indeed, with each other).

However, information on local government funding within the devolved administrations is available – some of the most useful sources are listed below.

3.1 Scotland The Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) has published several briefings on local government financing. The main ones are:

• Local government finance: Facts and figures 2013-14 to 2020-21, a briefing summarising the changes to local government finances in Scotland since 2013/14. This is presented in terms of the share of total government spending, as well as in real terms, and includes information about reforms to funding and taxation.

• Local government finance: Budget 2021-22 and provisional allocations to local authorities, a briefing looking specifically at 2020-21 within the context of the Scottish Government’s overall Budget. This mentions specific policy changes that apply to this particular Budget, and also lists the full allocations that each local authority will receive.

• Local Government Revenue Funding Allocations, a briefing paper produced for the Local Government and Regeneration Committee explaining the process by which revenue funding is allocated to Scotland’s local authorities.

The Scottish Government publishes a series of statistics about local government finance. The main resource it publishes is on local government financial statistics – it also publishes Council Tax statistics and Provisional Outturn and Budget Estimate statistics.

3.2 Wales The Welsh Parliament’s Research Service has produced a short briefing on local government in Wales, covering the structure and powers of its local authorities.

The Welsh Government’s statistical repository (StatsWales) has a number of datasets related to local government finance, including revenue budgets and financing and the central funding settlement.

3.3 Northern Ireland The NI Direct website provides an overview of the 11 local authorities in Northern Ireland, along with a list of their responsibilities. The Northern Ireland Department for Communities also has a page on local government funding, but does not provide financial statistics. Most

Local government works very differently in the devolved administrations, and they publish their own data.

https://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/ResearchBriefings/Report/2020/6/24/Local-Government-Finance--Facts-and-Figures-2013-14-to-2020-21https://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/ResearchBriefings/Report/2021/2/5/f3669358-b9b8-4f1e-b9d6-08d428cbacfchttps://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/ResearchBriefings/Report/2021/2/5/f3669358-b9b8-4f1e-b9d6-08d428cbacfchttp://www.parliament.scot/S4_LocalGovernmentandRegenerationCommittee/Meeting%20Papers/20140423-Papers.pdfhttps://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/PubScottishLGFStatshttps://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/PubScottishLGFStatshttps://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/DatasetsCouncilTaxhttps://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/POBEStatshttp://www.assembly.wales/NAfW%20Documents/tb-07-024.pdf%20-%2028072009/tb-07-024-English.pdfhttp://www.assembly.wales/NAfW%20Documents/tb-07-024.pdf%20-%2028072009/tb-07-024-English.pdfhttps://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Local-Government/Financehttps://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Local-Government/Finance/Revenuehttps://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Local-Government/Finance/Settlementhttps://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/local-councilshttps://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/articles/fundinghttps://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/articles/funding


financial figures for local authorities are best found on those authorities’ websites.

The Northern Ireland Audit Office produces regular reports on local government – the most recent contains an overview of the amount of money that councils in Northern Ireland have received and spent between 2014-15 and 2018-19, as well as information on other financial matters such as staffing costs and borrowing. Previous years’ reports are also available on the Audit Office’s website.

https://www.niauditoffice.gov.uk/publications/local-government-auditors-report-2020https://www.niauditoffice.gov.uk/publications/type/localGover


4. Further reading 4.1 Library briefings • Local government in England: structures: this briefing provides

basic details of the structure of local government within England, as well as more details on how funding arrangements work.

• Reviewing and reforming local government finance: this briefing covers the changes that are being made to the way in which local authorities are financed, particularly the move to letting councils retain 100% of the business rates they collect.

• The Library produces briefings for every Local Government Finance Settlement – the most recent is for the 2021-22 settlement.

The Library has also created an interactive dashboard providing details of settlement funding, core spending power and net spending for every local authority in England, including comparisons over time.

4.2 Other organisations The National Audit Office has produced a Departmental Overview of local authorities, covering their finances and some of the pressures currently facing them. It also produced a report in March 2018 on Financial sustainability of local authorities, which included an interactive visualisation of changes to authorities’ funding over time.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07104/https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7538/https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9129/https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/parliament-and-elections/local-government/local-authority-data-finances/https://www.nao.org.uk/report/departmental-overview-local-authorities-2019/https://www.nao.org.uk/report/financial-sustainability-of-local-authorities-2018/https://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/financial-sustainability-of-local-authorities-2018-visualisation/https://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/financial-sustainability-of-local-authorities-2018-visualisation/

BRIEFING PAPER Number 08431 23 March 2021

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1. Local government in England: structures and funding processes2. Local government finance statistics2.1 Settlement funding2.2 Spending power2.3 Spending2.4 What is the money spent on?

3. Devolved administrations3.1 Scotland3.2 Wales3.3 Northern Ireland

4. Further reading4.1 Library briefings4.2 Other organisations