Lack of leadership puts community-based budgets at risk

Author: James Illman and Allister Hayman, Local Government Chronicle   |  

Ministers’ much-vaunted community-based budgets programme is at risk of collapsing, senior council figures have warned.

And with councils ready to take their concerns to ministers, a Freedom of Information (FoI) request has revealed a lack of engagement from a key government department.

David Parsons (Con), chair of the Local Government Association improvement board, expressed concerns about the fledgling programme, set to go live in April.

“Community budgets need to go beyond pilot status or I think there’s a danger of this project losing altitude,” he told LGC. “What it needs is a ministerial steering group to drive this on in Whitehall and time is now pressing, as these schemes are supposed to be up and running soon.”

Senior figures are set to express their frustrations to ministers at a potentially critical meeting in the first week of March. One chief executive involved in the pilots said there was a “total absence of leadership within government”.

He added: “If the community budget pilots don’t show potential – and there are many that aren’t very advanced – then there’s a risk of the whole thing collapsing.

“At a departmental level it probably doesn’t help that the Department for Communities & Local Government and Department for Education (DfE) are leading and the Treasury’s taking more of a back seat.

“DCLG has a credibility problem with local government and DfE is still pretty reluctant to let go.”

Meanwhile, early responses to FoI requests reveal little or no engagement with the programme inside the Home Office.

The Home Office said it did not hold any information relating to the community budget proposals. It said the pilots “fall under the remit” of DCLG.

The Home Office’s response comes despite a letter sent by the Treasury to the pilots on 22 December that said some of its funding streams, including the drug intervention programme main grant, would be included in a “menu of funding options and other support” for community-based budget pilots.

The letter cautioned that the menu was “not designed to be a final set of options nor set out any specific ‘deals'”.

LGC is waiting for responses from other government departments.

The community-based budgets programme was unveiled in October, with DCLG pledging that various strands of Whitehall funding would be pooled into what was described as a “local bank account” for tackling chaotic families’ social problems.

But councils have become frustrated with what the LGA described as the “absence of a clear offer to devolve money”.

Other pilot areas were also cautious about the programme’s future. Lincolnshire CC chief executive Tony McArdle said: “There needs to be a change in language.

“At the moment there is talk about bidding to Whitehall. That’s very ‘old speak’ and not the way we want to go.”

Blackburn with Darwen BC’s director of policy & communications Tom Stannard said he was “still encouraged” by the programme’s potential but warned government “must come to the table to deliver the flexibilities we are asking for if the initiative is to keep its momentum”.

A DCLG spokesman said: “All [the pilots] are on track to implement their community budget plans in April as planned. Government is also looking at what central funding will be available for pooling and aligning and we are encouraging areas to make suggestions.”

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