Local Authority Finances
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Sahota(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the levelling-up White Paper set out our ambition for every part of the country that wanted a devolution deal in place to have one. As I referred to earlier, we are seeing trail-blazers of greater devolution in mayoral combined authorities, where we can put power back into the hands of local communities.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I recently read an article in the Financial Times on the state of our local authorities. It states that, due to all the budget cuts over the last 14 years, to make ends meet they are resorting to
“Asset stripping the public realm”.
The symbols of our civic identities are being sold off, which is diminishing our towns and cities and undermining our civil cohesion. Does the Minister agree with that assessment?
Baroness Penn (Con)
No, I do not agree with that assessment at all. We have put in additional funding to local government—not just this year, but in many recent years. In addition, we have put in significant funding, for example through the levelling up funds, to invest in local community assets that will build pride of place and develop local economies.
Levelling Up: Project Delivery
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Sahota(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, we deliver funding to local authorities in all sorts of ways. We are looking to deliver more funding to local authorities. That is why we are taking forward an approach of a single departmental settlement to those mayoral combined authorities in Birmingham and Manchester. We have a commitment to roll that out further to those areas that have directly elected representatives.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister knows, councils up and down the country spent millions of pounds preparing for their application to bid for the levelling-up funds. I am glad that the Government have changed the system now. Do the Government have any idea how many millions these cash-strapped councils have spent on preparing their applications—or maybe the Government did not ask that question because they did not want to know the answer?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, after announcing round 2 of the levelling-up funding, we recognised how many high-quality bids we had from councils that we were not able to meet during that round. That is why we took a different approach in round 3, looked at those existing bids and were able to make the allocations that were announced earlier this week. All in all, over 200 places have benefited from funding from the levelling-up funds. We recognise that there is a cost involved in bidding in these processes. That is why we provided those local authorities that were assessed as most in need in rounds 1 and 2 with additional funding to support the development of the bids in the first place.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Sahota(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right that there are a number of different actions that we need to take to address homelessness. We have the action on homelessness prevention strategy and the rough sleeping strategy; that is backed by more than £2 billion over three years, in addition to the increase in councils’ core budgets that I mentioned at the beginning. But we also need to look at the underlying supply of affordable and social homes, which is why we have the affordable homes programme in place. We are committed that that will continue to deliver large increases in the number of affordable homes available in this country.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, last year, local authorities spent £1.5 billion on temporary accommodation, which is up by 9% from the previous years. This is just one of the reasons that so many councils are on the brink of bankruptcy. When will this nightmare come to an end? It is cut after cut, since 2010. When will it end, and when will local government get some help?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord talks about cut after cut. Since 2019, local authorities have had a real-terms increase in their core spending power, taking into account higher levels of inflation than anticipated at the time. In addition to that, we have provided money for the homelessness prevention grant and the rough sleeping strategy, and in addition to that we have provided the £750 million that I referred to in answer to the right reverend Prelate to begin to address some of the longer-term solutions to how we address housing supply in our country.
Local Authorities: Budgets
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Sahota(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government are supporting councils. This is not about what is happening after the next election. In this spending review period, councils will receive £4.8 billion of new grant funding—the largest annual increase in core funding in over a decade—and that was further topped up at the Autumn Statement last year, recognising the pressures that councils face. Councils are doing an excellent job up and down the country, and we support them.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the reasons so many local authorities are in such financial trouble these days is because there is a lack of external scrutiny and transparency since the scrapping of the Audit Commission in 2015?
Baroness Penn (Con)
No, I do not agree. In recent years, a small number of local authorities took on excessive debt through their commercial strategies and investments. The Government have taken action both to bring this practice to an end and to revise the framework by which local authorities can borrow and invest. The levelling-up Bill expands statutory powers to directly tackle excessive risk within the local government capital system.