Briefings and responses

Councils provide a wide range of youth services. As local authority budgets have reduced and demand for services has increased, councils have had to make difficult decisions about how to use increasingly limited resources on youth services.

Councils are supporting children and young people with high quality mental health support. Children’s services see more than 500 cases a day of children presenting with a mental health problem.

Many of the services that impact young adults are delivered by local government. The challenges facing them span a range of issues. It is vital that the Government uses the Spending Review to deliver truly sustainable funding for local government. Investing in local services is good for the nation’s prosperity and overall wellbeing.

Improving and maintaining good mental health for children is a vital priority for councils. Intervening early can dramatically improve an individual’s life chances and save our public services money in the longer term.

The LGA supports the Government’s undertaking to address the abuse and exploitation of our online environment and social media through the creation of duty of care on online platforms, the creation of codes of practice, and the role of a regulator in monitoring and enforcing compliance. Whilst the internet and social media has undoubtable enriched our lives, councils have a strong interest in making our online environment safe and should be regarded as important stakeholders in the development of this policy.

LGA commissioned research found that councils are facing a high needs funding shortfall of £667 million in the 2019-20 financial year and this funding gap could rise to £1.6 billion by 2021.

Local government leaders support the national funding formula but are clear that setting 22,000 school budgets on a ‘one size fits all’ national formula decided remotely in Whitehall will not work.

The funding pressures facing schools are well known, with teacher and parent-led campaigns continuing to receive extensive coverage in the media. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates schools will see a real terms cut of 4.6 per cent in schools funding between 2015 and 2019

Councils are particularly concerned about the proposed changes to high needs funding which will reduce council and school flexibility to make additional funding available where there are rising demand pressures for SEND support.

"We remain concerned that the introduction of the NFF, combined with changes to High Needs Funding, will exacerbate existing shortfalls in funding to support children and young people with SEND."