Government spending

The 2010s saw big cuts to councils’ funding and spending, and while these may be over, rising costs and demands will mean further budget pressures. This report looks backwards and forwards at funding levels and reforms.

The Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor have both outlined the fiscal targets that they would seek to adhere to. Mr Javid has chosen to adopt a forward-looking rolling target aimed at current budget balance. In other words, day-to-day spending could not exceed total revenues. This is very similar in nature to Mr McDonnell’s longstanding current budget target.

Had Sajid Javid’s first Budget taken place as planned today he would have unveiled new forecasts showing that following considerable falls in borrowing over the current decade the era of deficit reduction is now at an end. Forecasts for borrowing next year would likely have been at least £30 billion higher than those made by the OBR back in March. We will get some new updates from the OBR tomorrow, but only to take account of statistical and accounting changes since the Spring. Here we provide a more fully updated set of fiscal forecasts which also take account of policy changes over the past nine months. The current political bidding war would lead us to believe that actual outturns for the deficit are likely to be significantly higher again.

The Spending Round announcement last week seems a positive move for the sector on the face of it, but raises questions over the the future balance between central control and local discretion writes David Phillips in this article for the MJ.

The long awaited 2019 Spending Review has finally been timetabled.

A presentation on recent trends and the outlook for local government spending. It includes a discussion of local tax devolution options, and the potential impacts of the ongoing Fair Funding Review.

In this article, David Phillips argues that pivotal choices loom on local government funding, but if we don’t address what we expect from our councils we risk a system that fails to meet our objectives.

Almost all the candidates in the Conservative leadership election have promised higher levels of spending on education. With a Spending Review of some form due this year, we analyse the cost of potential commitments on schools and education spending.

Videos and slides from the launch of the new IFS report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, into the overall impacts on health of the Sure Start programme.