Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities (SIGOMA) SIG - annual report to LGA Board 2025

• Lead Member: Councillor Sir Stephen Houghton CBE, Chair
• Lead Officer: Sam Blakeman, Research and Communications Manager
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: PO BOX 609, Plaza One, Westgate, Barnsley, S70 2DR
• Telephone: N/A
• Website: http://www.sigoma.gov.uk

50 Councils including Metropolitan Boroughs and Unitary Authorities

• Barnsley
• Birmingham
• Blackburn with Darwen
• Blackpool
• Bolton
• Bradford
• Bury
• Calderdale
• County Durham
• Coventry
• Derby
• Doncaster
• Dudley
• Gateshead
• Halton
• Kingston upon Hull
• Kirklees
• Knowsley
• Leeds
• Leicester
• Liverpool
• Manchester
• Middlesbrough
• Newcastle upon Tyne
• North Tyneside
• Nottingham
• Oldham
• Plymouth
• Portsmouth
• Rochdale
• Rotherham
• Salford
• Sandwell
• Sefton
• Sheffield ;
• South Tyneside ;
• Southampton
• St. Helens
• Stockport
• Stockton-on-Tees
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Sunderland
• Tameside
• Trafford
• Wakefield
• Walsall
• Warrington
• Wigan
• Wirral ;
• Wolverhampton

To lobby the government in order to help secure sufficient, sustainable and fair funding so that our members can maintain vital services and continue to invest in improving their local areas.

SIGOMA’s priorities are set out in our SIGOMA Manifesto covering local government finance, levelling up, children’s services, adult social care, transport, public health, housing, devolution, education, climate change and net zero and welfare provision. ;

In 2025-26, we will be focusing on areas of significant pressure for our members:

• Local government finance – securing fair, sufficient and sustainable funding for our members, including timely multi-year settlements, a reset of business rates, and the fair funding review.
• Children’s services – tackling the growing cost of children’s services through designated funding for preventative services, an increase in the quantum of funding to meet demand, and an effort to tackle profiteering in the residential market.
• Adult social care – creating a sustainable adult social care system, through certainty on reforms for adult social care, greater funding for preventative services and a review of how adult social care is funded.
• Housing – addressing the source of growing demand for housing and homelessness services, including amendments to right-to-buy to reduce the loss of social housing, concerted effort, backed by needs-based funding, to build more social housing, and changes to Housing Revenue Accounts and Housing Benefit which are causing deficits for many authorities.

These priorities align with the LGA’s theme 1, a sustainable financial future, and theme 3, putting people first.

Our main focus is on securing a fairer funding system. The current funding reform will be crucial in delivering this. We published a report Towards a Fairer Future in March 2025 which set out our main asks. These are for the government to:

• Commit to deprivation as a key factor in the formula review.
• Commit to regular resets to ensure need is prioritised.
• Limit transitional arrangements to a 3-year period.
• Commit to full equalisation of Council Tax receipts
• Commit to more sustainable investment into the local government sector
   

Campaigning and advocating for our members

SIGOMA represents our members’ interests through a range of platforms such as working and steering groups, government consultations and inquiries, and local government sector calls with MHCLG.

We regularly communicate the challenges facing our local authorities and their solutions to Members of Parliament, Ministers, and the political parties to encourage change from government.

Research and Policy Development

SIGOMA regularly conducts in-depth analysis and research on areas of pressure for member councils, such as local government finance, children’s services and adult social care, to understand and highlight these challenges. We use this in our campaigning and communications work to suggest policy changes.

This year, we launched our fair funding campaign Towards a Fairer Future ;in Parliament alongside MPs and Ministers.

Supporting SIGOMA members

SIGOMA supports elected members, officers and senior officers at our member councils through our various networks, including:

• Analysing relevant government proposals and legislation for their impact on and fairness to our members.
• Hosting meetings of our Technical Officer and Full Members’ groups to share our research, detail the progress of our campaigns, facilitate discussion and provide an opportunity for Officers and Members to contribute their views and ideas. In 2024-25 we have established a Chief Executive’s Network in addition to these groups.
• Providing regular email bulletins to policy officers, technical officers and Directors of Finance to draw attention to the latest policy developments, legislation changes, funding allocations and insights in local government.
• Conducting surveys amongst our membership to feed their views and experience into our research.
• Facilitating a forum for discussion and information sharing by circulating queries from members, enabling our members to understand how other member councils are handling and managing the big problems facing the sector.

Communications and press activity

SIGOMA regularly secure appearances in the national, regional, local and sector press to communicate our stance and make the case for a fairer and more sustainable future for local government. In 2024-25, we secured over 74 press appearances including regular appearances in national outlets such as the Guardian, The Times, iNews ;and sector publications including Room 151, Local Government Chronicle and ;the Municipal Journal.

We utilise an active and growing presence on social media, including LinkedIn, to highlight the pressures on local government and ensure our content reaches a wide audience.