Local government funding needs to be put at the top of the agenda despite global challenges - Carl Les

The County Councils Network has warned that the Treasury’s reduction in day-to-day funding for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government could push authorities “to the brink”.

Here in North Yorkshire, we are facing our own very real fiscal challenges, as an unexpected change in our funding left us almost £22m worse off for this new financial year. We have still managed to balance our budget, although this has meant the use of £5m from our reserves.

This has been caused by increases in National Insurance employer contributions along with the Government’s decision to scrap a multi-million pound grant for local authorities covering rural areas.

However, as the new financial year starts, it is a moment to reflect on exactly what is achieved every day here in North Yorkshire.

We as a council cover England’s largest county spanning 3,090 square miles and provide services to some of the country’s most deeply rural communities.

To put this in perspective, we are the country’s third largest local council by head of population, responsible for providing services to our 615,000 residents.

We are responsible for an extremely varied range of services, and the rural context of North Yorkshire presents very real challenges.

The financial pressures we face have been compounded by the unrelenting demand for care of older people, working age adults, and children and young people.

Each hour of social care in North Yorkshire’s rural communities can cost £5 more than in other parts of the country because of the travel costs and the longer journey times between clients. The council purchases more than two million hours of care for people in their homes each year.

We support 3,500 people in residential or nursing care, and more than 15,700 young people with special educational needs.

We also spend more than £50m each year on home to school transport and the policy has had to be revised after costs have more than doubled since 2018/19 when it was last reviewed.

We are responsible for maintaining 5,750 miles of roads and more than 4,300 miles of public rights of way. North Yorkshire’s roads span the equivalent distance from Northallerton to Tokyo.

In the region of 8,500 council houses are managed and maintained by ourselves, and we are responsible for collecting about 310,000 tonnes of waste from approximately 300,000 homes.

About 45 per cent of this waste is recycled, reused or composted as part of our commitment to protecting the environment.

There are 23 leisure venues including 16 swimming pools, and we are bringing our facilities inhouse under the banner of the Active North Yorkshire service to create wellbeing hubs and improve the health of our communities.

We make about 6,000 decisions on planning applications every year, and we are responsible for processing approximately 50,000 housing benefit changes annually.

Our commitment to tackling the critical lack of affordable housing has seen us leading the way nationally by introducing a 100 per cent council tax premium on second home-owners.

We were among the first councils in the country to adopt the national legislation which has introduced the premium from this month.

Tourism is a vital part of our local economy, and we launched our new destination management and marketing organisation, Visit North Yorkshire, in October last year.

We have just marked our second anniversary after North Yorkshire Council was formed on April 1, 2023, and the move to bring the previous eight local authorities together has presented us with a huge opportunity to streamline services and present the very best value for our taxpayers.

However, massive financial challenges remain.

Following the launch of North Yorkshire Council, a plan has been drawn up to achieve more than £60m in further savings - although this has still left a predicted £34m annual deficit by March 31, 2028.

The biggest funding pressures in North Yorkshire for this new financial year have come about because of the loss of the rural services delivery grant as well as the unfunded rising costs of National Insurance contributions.

North Yorkshire Council received the greatest share nationally of the rural services delivery grant with £14.3m in funding each year. The £110m package of funding for councils covering rural parts of England was a recognition from Westminster of the challenges of providing services.

The Government has pledged to undertake a review of local government funding, and this has to be placed at the top of the political agenda.

Carl Les is the Leader of North Yorkshire Council.