Following postings on this blog and thr Brent Conservative Group's attempt to get the issue debated, Conrad Hall, Brent Council's Chief Finance Officer has issued this briefing note:
Four year funding settlement
1.
As part of last year's local government finance
settlement DCLG allowed local authorities to fix their revenue support grant
(RSG) settlement until 2019/20 and set a deadline of 14 October by when local
authorities had to decide whether or not to accept the offer. After this date any councils which have not
responded would be considered to have rejected the offer.
2.
To accept the offer councils merely need to
write to DCLG confirming their decision and submit an efficiency plan. There is little or no guidance on the
efficiency plan, except that it should be brief, no more than four pages. Most councils that have accepted the offer to
date merely seem to have submitted their existing MTFS or a version of it,
which has been acceptable.
3.
The option to fix RSG through to 2019/20 has
therefore been known about for almost a year.
It has been referenced in update reports on the budget and financial
position during this period. The budget
report to council on 22 February 2016, for example, set out what was known at
that time and commented that "officers have assumed that funding from
2017/18 to 2019/20 will be as set out in the draft four year settlement".
4.
It is therefore clear that the financial
strategy already agreed was based on an assumption that the option to fix RSG
would be accepted. Of course, Members
could decide otherwise.
5.
However, the arguments for fixing the settlement
are as strong now as they were seven months ago when the current budget was
set. Certainty in financial planning is
always advantageous and it is undoubtedly the case that the local government
sector has persistently argued for longer-term funding settlements than the
single year normally allocated by DCLG.
Arguably this makes it rather perverse then to reject an offer to
provide that very certainty.
6.
Given this, the argument to reject the
settlement only makes logical sense if one believes that more resources might
be allocated in later years than currently planned, and that councils that had
fixed their settlements would therefore lose out. For this to stack up one must believe that
government's net revenue spending will increase over the next three years and
that at least some of that additional expenditure would be allocated to local
government, rather than say to the NHS or to fund tax cuts.
7.
Neither of these appears likely. Furthermore, one would also have to believe
that additional resources allocated to local government would flow through to
London for Brent to benefit by rejecting the fix. As other changes to aspects of the overall
funding system are tending to move resources away from London this would be an
optimistic assumption.
8.
Of course, accepting the fix guarantees that RSG
will continue to fall sharply until 2019/20.
However, the decision is about whether to guarantee future funding
levels and accepting the fix does not imply agreement with the actual amount
allocated. It is merely a pragmatic way
of managing a very challenging financial settlement by reducing future
volatility and risk.
9.
Legally, Parliament cannot bind a future
Parliament, and so DCLG retains the right to vary future settlements even for
those councils that accept the fix.
However, officials have made it clear that they would be very reluctant
to do so and it is reasonable to assume that the fix would be honoured
in any but the most extreme economic circumstances.
10. Within
London officers know of no councils rejecting the opportunity to fix RSG. Decision making has usually been managed at
Cabinet. A few councils have formally
taken the decision at a council meeting or as a delegated decision. Where the matter has been decided at Council
officers understand that there has apparently been no significant debate, on
the item.
Conrad Hall
Chief Finance Officer
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