This briefing note examines impacts for English councils using outturns data for 2020–21, compares these with expectations based on ex ante and rapidly available indicators, and considers the implications for both councils’ current financial resilience and how the financial impacts of future extreme adverse shocks should be monitored.
An initial analysis of the 2022-23 Local Government Finance Settlement finds slightly more funding than expected, and bigger increases for poorer areas.
This report looks at the extent to which these risks vary and the degree to which they are correlated, focusing on LAs’ revenues and financial resilience. It also briefly discusses the extra funding that central government has made available to them to help them address these risks in the current financial year.
In this briefing note, we update and extend previous IFS analysis, to consider how employment, incomes, benefit claims and council tax payments have evolved over a longer period and have varied geographically, and draw out key implications for local government.
Last week, the IFS published research on how the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on consumer spending and behaviour has varied across the country. In a new observation, we consider the implications of this research for local government.
On Thursday, the government set out its plans for council funding in England next year. In this briefing note we examine plans for both core funding and top-ups for ongoing COVID-19 related costs, and look at some of the issues looming beyond next year.
The past nine months have seen huge swings in households’ spending, both in total and across various goods and services. In this briefing note, we analyse the geographical patterns of these changes.
The COVID-19 crisis is having immediate effects on councils’ budgets as a result of increases in spending on local services and reductions in income from sales, fees and charges and commercial activities.
