DEVON’S councils still face a battle to make ends meet despite a £1.3 billion cash boost from this week’s budget.

The chancellor earmarked the money for essential services up and down the country including social care, housing and special needs education, areas driving many councils to bankruptcy.

But the nation’s town and city halls still need more.

The chancellor’s budget figures were analysed by Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit.

He said: “The chancellor billed this as an historically consequential budget of hard choices. That’s certainly true in many areas with £40 billion of tax rises announced and significant changes to the government’s debt rules.

“For local government, however, it is a budget of choices deferred. It could have been worse – there’s an additional £1.3 billion in funding, but it is not even half the gap that councils currently face.

“The longer-term change that the sector desperately needs is all deferred for now. We are waiting on the Local Government Finance Settlement, on the Devolution White Paper and on a broader redistribution of funding through a multi-year settlement from 2026-27.”

Mr Carr-West said “welcome highlights” include retaining 100 per cent of right-to-buy receipts, but there was still work to do.

“Is this a start? Yes. Is it enough? Not by a long shot,” he said. “At least not yet. There’s a positive direction of travel set out, but there’s a long way to go and the pressure on council finances means there’s a real risk that some councils will not be able to hang on long enough to get there.”

Guy Henderson

LDRS