Residents face paying higher council tax bills for fewer services unless the government mends the “broken or flawed” parts of the local authority finance
Local government should not be caught up in complicated changes to audit policy intended to catch unrelated problems in the commercial sector, the chair of the Local Government Association resources board has warned.
Sharon Taylor (Lab) voiced concerns at today s board meeting that an overhaul of UK audit regulations by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) might lead to a repeat of “cases in the past where we have been caught up in very stringent provisions put in place for the commercial sector that are not always applicable to us and do have unintended consequences sometimes; we must stress local government is not the same as the commercial sector”.
Government proposals to overhaul the new homes bonus scheme have come under fire for ignoring the fact so many new homes are now built using permitted development rights which fall outside the scheme s parameters, sparking claims of unfairness in the system.
The consultation on the future of the new homes bonus scheme, which was launched last month, sets out possible changes such as revising the thresholds for payments, raising the baseline percentage growth of housing stock for eligibility to the scheme from 0.4% to either 0.6%, 0.8% or 1% to encourage more ambitious delivery.
Alternatively, the government proposes linking the bonus to an increase in the rate of house build rather than growth by rewarding councils for improving their housing delivery over an annual average of their past net additions.
Concerns have been raised that political considerations lie behind the selection of some areas that will receive new government support following yesterday s Budget.
Leaders and chiefs in deprived areas that have been pushed towards the back of the queue for support under the new levelling up fund have expressed disbelief at their exclusion.
Meanwhile it has emerged that almost 90% - 40 out of 45 - of the latest recipients of the towns fund which were announced yesterday have at least one Tory MP.
Graeme McDonald, managing director of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, tweeted: “Feeling hugely uncomfortable about the allocations from the Town Fund. Hope it receives and is able to stand up to the level of scrutiny it deserves.”
A set of proposals which would more tightly define borrowing rules and set up new committees within councils as another layer of financial oversight have been slammed as “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut” by council leaders from across the political spectrum.
The proposed amendments to the prudential code and treasury management code - both part of the prudential framework - are laid out in a consultation launched last month by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy. But the changes have been widely disparaged as too prescriptive by members of the Local Government Association’s resources board.
Cipfa is proposing adding new statements to the prudential code spelling out in stronger terms that councils should not borrow purely to generate income. One proposed addition states that councils must not borrow to fund primarily yield generating investments”, clarifying that this “does not cover borrowing where the primary aim is rooted in the function of the