The north London borough is experiencing a funding emergency because of ever-growing demands for services, rising costs, an increasing ageing population and 14 years of austerity.
Responding to a government consultation on the future of local government funding – which closed for responses last week - Haringey says the government must consider the actual costs of services such as social care placements, where local authorities have very little power to resist price rises, rather than simply the number of vulnerable people needing that support.
Haringey has also called on government to include recognition of the increased demand and costs of providing temporary accommodation and services for children with special educational needs. These two areas are not specifically included in the proposals for a new funding formula, yet account for a significant pressure on local authority budgets across the country.
With Haringey having an average council tax of Band C – lower than the expected average of Band D - the new formula must also consider the actual size of the council tax base for each local authority when determining the level of funding required from government to meet their total funding needs.
Haringey is also calling on the government for greater support to build more council homes.
The council’s response to the consultation also called for the new funding formula to come into force quickly given the numbers of councils facing a funding emergency and multi-year settlements that are based on accurate assumptions of population.
Haringey Council Leader, Cllr Peray Ahmet, said:
Councils up and down the country are struggling to make ends meet and to provide the services that residents rely on. The distribution of local authority funding is really important as a matter of fairness and Haringey is pleased that the Government is looking at fairer funding. Our response strongly encourages that this is based on the relative needs of our local population.
Haringey provides good services that residents rely on, that enrich peoples’ lives and public spaces to be proud of. But also, council services often prevent additional need and costs further down the line and so proper investment is not only the right thing to do but makes financial sense.
We welcome the additional £16m in funding we have received from the government for next year.
However, this is not sufficient to cater for the increased cost of providing statutory services to our residents: our 2025/2026 budget includes an additional £31m for adult social care, £12m for temporary accommodation and £6.5m for children’s social care and SEND. These services account for over 60% of our total budget.
It is also critical for government to recognise that there is insufficient funding across the whole sector to pay for the increase in demand and cost of services.
No system of redistribution will be able to address this scale of rising costs. Ultimately, local government will need a greater share of public spending. This is a point we will continue to make as we approach the comprehensive spending review.
