22 October 2010
Ministers have stated their intention to implement ‘community budgets’ across England by 2013/14, and set out in more detail how the initial schemes, beginning next year, will work.
The first phase, announced in Wednesday’s Comprehensive Spending Review, will cover 31 councils in 16 areas. Those involved will be able to pool various Whitehall funding pots into what the Department for Communities and Local Government is calling a ‘local bank account’ – for use on social problems involving families with complex needs.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said services would become cheaper and more effective if they became more joined up and focused more on early intervention. The government intends to extend the initiative to authorities with elected mayors next, and nationally by 2013/14.
‘Whitehall funding has been funnelled through hundreds of disparate funding programmes wrapped up in tight financial conditions that effectively strangled local choice,’ he said. ‘As a result the incentive to be innovative, efficient and responsive to voters instead of Whitehall was dramatically dulled.’
Community budgets will allow local authorities to redesign services across agencies, tailoring them to the needs of the most vulnerable service users, ministers claim.
However, no mention has yet been made on whether the initiative will be extended to other areas of public spending – the initiative’s forerunner, the Total Place pilots, covered issues such as drugs and alcoholism and the public estate.
The 16 areas have been chosen because the government believes they have already demonstrated strong relationships with residents, voluntary organisations and public bodies. They are: Birmingham; Blackburn with Darwen; Blackpool; Bradford; Essex; a group of 13 councils covering Greater Manchester; Hull; Kent; Leicestershire; Lincolnshire; Swindon; the London boroughs of Barnet, Croydon, Islington and Lewisham. The sixteenth area comprises four other London boroughs: Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Wandsworth.
