Local government expenditure has been slashed even more severely than health or social security, so an even colder wind is blowing through town halls across the country.
Councils are producing their own variants of the ‘graph of doom’, which plots what the future pattern of local government services will be on present trends, with money tight and older people forming an ever larger share of the population.
What it shows is that councils will only be able to provide care and support for their elderly and disabled residents, and fulfil their legal duties in respect of children, such as in the area of child protection. And that is it. The combination of changing demands and ever tighter budgets is likely to squeeze out nearly everything else councils do – libraries, parks, rubbish collection, street lighting, leisure facilities, everything.
Of course, councils will have to find ways of keeping the bins emptied. Charges will rise and new sources of income found. But the scale and speed of the squeeze is unnerving and what is absolutely clear is that ‘business as usual’ won’t be an option.
The need for a government response to the wider issue of social care funding has been ducked again. The government fought the last election with stark warnings of a Labour ‘death tax’ to help fund the care of elderly people, promising instead to help people who must sell their homes to pay for care. Yet today they have no viable plan to fund even the existing demand for social care, let alone future levels.
Time is running out for an honest and viable solution.
