Councillor Ian Courts, Leader of Solihull Council, highlights the urgent need for long-term funding solutions, enhanced collaboration, and a focus on sustainability to ensure the financial stability, effective service delivery, and climate resilience of local authorities like Solihull Council.
Councillor Ian Courts
Leader of Solihull CouncilAddressing Financial Pressures and the Need for a New Funding Approach
Nationally, regionally, and locally, we need to find long-term solutions for local government. A more joined-up approach is necessary – and Solihull Council is keen to play a lead role in delivering new models of public service delivery.
As a Council, we have unfunded spending pressures facing us in the next few years. We must take a serious look at how we spend the money available to us. One of the major difficulties in managing local government finances has long been the short-term nature of funding arrangements.
The announcement in the Autumn Budget on moving towards a multi-year settlement for local government, alongside additional announcements on extra funding for the next financial year, was a step in the right direction. However, the devil is in the detail and the difficulty is not in promising but in delivering.
Local authorities, and the services we provide to our residents, still face a precarious short and long-term future. Approximately two-thirds of our budget is spent on delivering children’s services and adult social care. These are vital statutory services, and the costs of delivering them are increasing exponentially. That means non-statutory services are under pressure.
To tackle our spending pressures over the coming years, we are looking at new ways to raise revenue, and new ways to work better with our partners; local MPs, regional leaders and other public agencies such as health.
I continue to push a joined-up approach as hard as I can. In the West Midlands, we need to speak with one voice to achieve adequate and stable funding. I am calling for Government to support greater ‘double devolution’. We need to see more funding and capacity flowing down from combined authorities to local authorities, who are the key delivery agents.
Collaborative Public Service Delivery and Sustainable Growth
Going forwards, the focus of public services needs to be on prevention. This is obvious in the health arena but also in children’s services, where intervention at an early stage has a positive impact on health, education, and employment opportunities, whilst also tackling worklessness.
Transport is key to connecting jobs with homes, no more so than in Solihull, with the HS2 Interchange Station based in our borough. We need to continue holding Government to account for the delivery of funding announced previously, to unlock transport and infrastructure schemes locally.
Reforms to the planning system are another area of focus for Government. However, we need to recognise that sovereignty for plan-making should remain with individual local planning authorities. I do not doubt the need for housing, nor for the growth it could potentially drive, but in Solihull we must be cautious not to lose the unique and incredibly valuable green lungs of the Meridan Gap, sitting between Birmingham and Coventry.
Of course, solving problems across all levels of government is difficult. Every Government department has its own bureaucracy, but breaking down silos and bringing together public services at the frontline is key.
In Solihull, we’re committed to sustainable solutions and effective delivery, not flashy sounding ideas that we can’t put into practice.
Climate Change, Green Growth, and Long-Term Sustainability
Green growth, sustainability, and action on climate change runs through everything we do, even when faced with the challenging financial environment. Net zero has become increasingly ideological – we must move away from this and continue to stress the benefits of climate change action.
Our vision for the future of Solihull is to ensure we are one of the most sustainable, prosperous and inclusive places in the country, helping to lead the fight against climate change. As such, I welcomed the commitment to cut emissions in the UK by 2035 by 81% compared to 1990 levels, announced at COP earlier this month.
What is crucial in delivering the Government’s ambitions for growth and devolution is the financial sustainability of local authorities.