Bus and adult care services face cuts, English councils warn

Councils across England have warned that they are likely to start cutting everyday services from next year as their finances are squeezed.

Some fear the situation is so bad they could be facing bankruptcy within the next 18 months.

Bus services, home care for older people and climate change projects are most likely to be cut, according to a survey of county councils.

Other services in the firing line include leisure centres and parking.

Many councils are calling on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to provide more money in his Autumn Statement next Thursday.

The government says it is working with councils to understand how inflation affects their budgets, and funding for next year will be announced shortly.

Rapidly rising inflation and increased demand for services, particularly in social care and housing, have added millions of pounds of extra costs for local authorities this year.

Chris Tambini, the president of a group of finance chiefs known as the Society of County Treasurers, said the speed at which inflation had risen was partly to blame, but it had also come on top of a decade of enforced savings.

"We've been at this for over 10 years now, so we came into this with fragile finances," he said.

"I think it's going to be a real struggle to provide services in line with what people expected in previous years because funding is so tight."

A survey of dozens of mostly rural authorities in England belonging to the County Councils Network found that around a third were "not confident" they would still be solvent in 18 months' time if more money was not provided.

The figure rose to more than 70% for the 2024/25 financial year.

Projects to tackle climate change were most likely to face the axe, with 78% of councils surveyed saying that was a likely target.

This was closely followed by subsidies to bus services, with 75% of councils saying they would consider ending some or all of them.

Some 72% of those surveyed said they would look at tightening eligibility to adult social care, which could include measures such as reducing the number of visits by carers to people in their homes or giving them less time.

More than half suggested they were likely to look at reducing road maintenance, cuts to home-to-school transport, and changes to either the number or opening hours of libraries or recycling centres.

The vast majority - 81% - also said they were likely to cancel or pause new building projects such as constructing leisure centres or improving train stations.

District councils are also warning they are considering cuts to public-facing services.

Great Yarmouth Borough Council is currently looking at starting to charge people to use public toilets and increasing other fees as part of measures to fund a £1m shortfall in its budget.

In St Albans in Hertfordshire, the city and district council is considering putting up parking charges, changing fortnightly bin collections to a longer wait and cutting the opening hours of leisure centres.

The council's leader Chris White, a Liberal Democrat, said: "The trouble with raising car parking charges is that it doesn't help businesses recover from Covid and the downturn, and it doesn't necessarily help the council's finances recover much - people may stop using the car park.

"And with leisure services, they exist to keep people healthy, so scaling them back is neither good for users nor for wider society which could face dealing with more obesity and poor health."

The amount of money given to councils by the government in grants has halved since 2010.

In recent years, the trend has been towards council tax providing a larger share of a local authority's income.

The Treasury is thought to be considering lifting the cap on how much local authorities can increase council tax to help, particularly with social care pressures.

Authorities can currently only raise it by up to 3% without holding a referendum of local voters.

Labour peer Baroness Taylor, who leads Stevenage Council, said even a significant rise would not be enough.

She said her authority had raised £174,000 in the past two years by putting up council tax by the maximum allowed, and unfunded inflation was currently costing it about £1.6m.

"Our residents are so hard-pressed at the moment, none of us will want to impose very substantial council tax increases. Council tax isn't the answer to this problem."

A government spokesperson said: "We understand that councils are concerned about the impact of inflation and we are working with them to understand how this will affect their budgets.

"This year, we have made available an additional £3.7 billion to councils to ensure they have the resources to maintain and improve their vital services.

Details of next year's core funding would be announced shortly, the spokesperson added.