Our 100 offers to the new government

Our 100 offers are informed by our Local Government White Paper.

• An equal, respectful partnership between local and national government so that we can deliver the change local communities want. A genuine partnership model backed by statute, based on best international practice. A new central local partnership – we will create a representative group from local govt to agree a new approach to devolution with central govt and combined authorities and drive forward reforms. 
• The codification of the Council of Europe’s Charter of Local Self-Governance. This would give clear and irrevocable power to local government and communities, enshrining the principles of localism in law. It would give local government in England a measure of constitutional protection that is common in other democracies.
• Publish a cross-departmental strategy setting out national commitments to prevent homelessness, including developing an implementation plan, monitoring and reporting departments’ contribution, and ensuring that local delivery agents contribute to prevention activity and targets through local homelessness strategies.
• A package of transport related legislative and funding reforms to empower councils to manage traffic and travel more effectively.
• Update the Modification Order. The Redundancy Payments (Continuity of Employment in Local Government, etc.) (Modification) Order 1999 was traditionally updated at regular intervals but has not been updated for 9 years. This is affecting organisations, their employees and potential employees, who are waiting to be added to the Order. 

• Funding fit for the future. Sufficient, multi-year funding for local government with combined funding pots so that local services can develop and transform in a planned way, alongside a cross-party review of, and debate on, options to improve the local government finance system. This includes updating the formulas and the underlying data used for the assessment of relative needs and resources combined with transitional mechanisms to ensure that no council experiences a loss of income in the move to new formulae. Reform of, and freedoms and flexibilities over council tax, business rates and sales, fees and charges. Assignment, to local areas, of a proportion of nationally collected taxes paid by citizens in each area. Freedom to collect different taxes in different ways to support local priorities, or introduce new local levies, such as a tourism tax, an e-commerce levy, and the power to introduce a workplace parking levy.
• Ensure future growth funding cycles are allocated on a six-to-eight-year basis as consolidated pots for councils to invest according to local need.
• An increase in Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) grant levels per unit to deliver more new affordable homes and ensure inflationary pressures do not jeopardise continued delivery.
• Continue to uprate Local Housing Allowances rates to the 30th percentile of local rents beyond 2025/26.
• Increase the subsidy for temporary accommodation, so that it is no longer frozen at 90 per cent of 2011 LHA rates.
• Strengthened Housing Revenue Accounts via a long-term rent settlement and restoration of lost revenue due to rent cap/cuts, to give councils certainty on rental income and support long-term business planning. 
• The Government should meet existing cost pressures to stabilise the children’s social care system and invest in solutions that work. Fully funding placements for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and care leavers. Programmes that reduce demand for placements and expand placement capacity. Review the new burdens funding for Staying Put policy for children in care to address current underfunding.
• Dedicated action to increase the number of children’s social workers, including Government-funded training programmes and bursaries to encourage retraining from other professions and £500,000 to fund an extension to the Return to Social Work programme to bring 200 social workers back to the profession. This will help to address challenges in recruiting sufficient children’s social workers and support improved stability for children and young people.
• The DWP should work with the DfE to share data and automatically enrol all children who are eligible for free school meals, as well as automatically providing pupil premium funding for all children who are eligible – regardless of whether they wish to claim a meal.
• The Government should review the current £7,400 income threshold for free school meals, which has remained unchanged since its introduction in 2018, to reach more children who are on the cusp of experiencing food poverty as household budgets are squeezed by rising prices and inflation.
• Allow councils to build maintained schools if that is the local preference (new schools currently must be academies).
• Extend funding for Household Support Fund (£500m) to the end of March 2025. Work with the LGA and councils to design a more preventative and sustainable approach to local welfare support.
• Empower and adequately fund councils to better shape locally how they engage with their communities. Recognise and support the value of innovative forms of community engagement in shaping places, tackling entrenched inequalities and reaching marginalised communities. 
• Avoid funding cliff edge in drug treatment. The current three years’ worth of drug treatment funding (£533m) comes to an end in March 2025, whilst Government is only three years into its 10 year strategy.
• Review the public health grant and the mandated functions that local authorities deliver. Sufficient ongoing funding is needed to ensure all councils can meet their statutory public health responsibilities. A review of the public health grant and how it is distributed should consider changes in population, deprivation and need.
• Fund adult social care adequately, sustainably and with trust in councils as democratically accountable bodies. The exact funding requirement should be identified through a collaborative process.
• Dedicated funding for apprenticeships and recruitment programmes related to the regulatory services workforce to boost the future pipeline of officers entering local government. There is currently an ageing workforce and in regulatory services and a shortfall of new recruits, leading to under inspection in food safety and threatening the ability to deliver regulation in the future. 
• A shift in the allocation of funding resources towards a more substantial investment in prevention and early intervention programmes to reduce the number of people entering the criminal justice system and re-offending. This will have the long-term benefit of reducing crime rates, as well as reducing costs around policing and community safety. Such programmes could also reduce instances of violence against women and girls and with issues like domestic abuse.
• Further and continued investment in measures that build community cohesion and resilience within communities. Specifically, resume funding for the LGA Special Interest Group on Countering Extremism.
• Fire and rescue authorities should be funded according to risk and have access to capital funding. Fire and rescue authorities do not currently have access to capital funding. It is clear that the risks facing the fire service are changing in terms of adapting to climate change and capital funding would support services to respond to these risks. 
• Funding the LGA to provide improvement support to the fire and rescue sector. The LGA is currently not funded to provide improvement work to the fire sector through the Home Office. We believe we could provide useful improvement support to the sector. This would be particularly meaningful given the issues around culture that have come out through the media. Members play a significant role in driving change, and this would support them to do that, improving culture within the sector and enhancing the service’s connection with communities.
• Increased investment in local government mental health support to adults and reform the Mental Health Act.
• Increase investment in supported housing.
• Reinstate local suicide prevention funding. The NHS Long Term Plan invested in local suicide prevention services through integrated care boards. This funding has now come to an end and valuable local services are facing a funding cliff edge if councils are unable to reallocate funding from already stretched budgets. Many individuals at risk of suicide have not engaged with mental health and clinical services, meaning local suicide prevention initiatives are crucial.
• Allow councils appropriate freedoms to borrow and invest, without the need to seek prior approval from government and make the flexible use of capital receipts.

• Backing local government as place leaders – with new powers to bring partners together to get services working better, and drive local growth.
• A reformed and ambitious employment and skills offer (Work Local) which is linked to local services and meeting local need which requires councils, businesses, local further education colleges and other local bodies to work together to deliver on these issues within a supportive national framework. A new joint national board, chaired by a Minister, to plan and oversee reform with a new Joint Unit, of civil servants and local govt officers, to co-ordinate. New ‘duty to co-operate’ for partners to improve services; reform ‘Universal Support’; review devolution deal process, expand partnership with local NHS. A multi-year plan for roll-out of devolution; early call for new initiatives and pilots; and new networks to promote dialogue and learning. 
• A task force on public service reform to look at how public services can work together to improve how services are delivered across a place.
• Unlock the potential of local government to lead on inclusive growth by supporting place-led economic strategy, place-based employment and skills offer, stabilise the existing growth funding landscape, focus on data to inform local and national strategies and investment in local economic development capabilities.
• Co-design an enhanced framework for devolution and local inclusive growth. Work with government to create a non-bureaucratic and agile forum for local and national government to discuss forthcoming legislation, aggregate expenditure levels and emerging areas of joint priority.
• Provide consistent support for voluntary sector infrastructure to enable capacity building and a well-functioning and diverse Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise ecosystem. The voluntary sector can mobilise quickly and provide access to an additional workforce. Services such as information and advice, volunteer visiting at home, advice and support to unpaid carers, handyperson services, and home from hospital services can all play a key role in meeting low-level needs after discharge, as well contributing to preventing possible readmission.
• Implement Local Audit proposals. The new Government should commit to implementing the proposals published in February to deal with the audit backlog as these represent the best opportunity for resolving the situation. A long-term solution also needs to be progressed urgently, with involvement from the sector.
• A cross-Whitehall approach to a planned, more equitable and place based approach to the effective and appropriate accommodation and support of asylum seekers and refugees of all ages, linked to cross-system work on innovative solutions to housing supply challenges, and based on local government as an equal partner; a shared understanding of local impacts and risks including housing challenges; and sustainable funding. 
• Embed Local Visitor Economy Partnerships in strategic plans for areas, enabling managed and sustainable growth in the visitor economy, including regulation of short-term lets and introduction of more visitor levies across the country.

• A new focus on prevention – backing council services to promote health, wellbeing and prosperity from birth to later life. Work with government to secure a more consistent, long-term approach to prevention, pushing for certainty in funding and clarity on shared objectives. Work across the sector to ensure an integrated place-based approach to prevention, building on the lessons of total place. Work with councils and stakeholders to develop cost benefit analysis and build the evidence base, to enable an efficient and sustainable approach to community investment. Work with councils to integrate lived experience more effectively into the design and delivery of preventative local services.
• Co-design a system to improve cost transparency and financial oversight of the biggest providers of children’s social care placements. This will help to ensure that placements provide good value for money, that children’s social care funds deliver the best possible outcomes for children and provide early warning of potential financial failure of large provider groups to limit the impact of failure on children.
• A mandatory requirement on Integrated Care Boards to involve elected local leaders in resource allocation and commissioning decisions, and ensure decisions reflect the mandate of local communities.
• A joint campaign for respect in public life to emphasise that that local and national leaders stand united on the need for democratic debate free from abuse and hatred.
• A new ambition for children and young people with additional needs, promoting inclusion in education and preparation for adult life across education, children’s and young people’s services. This would be a key building block in ensuring a reformed SEND system can support all children with special needs, including the creation of a “National Framework” for SEND and a cross government plan for children and young people.
• The writing off of all Dedicated Schools Grant deficits, to relieve the current high needs funding pressures councils are facing and provide breathing space to develop the necessary radical reforms of the SEND system that are urgently needed.
• Pausing Ofsted/Care Quality Commission SEND area inspections. Local areas are testing a range of proposed reforms set out in the SEND and Alternative Provision improvement plan, creating a great deal of additional turbulence and uncertainty in local SEND systems. Pausing that inspection work would allow councils to focus on meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND, whilst refocussing activity on identifying the national, systemic issues with the SEND system would provide evidence on how the SEND system could be improved to better address need. 
• Further action to tackle cost of living pressures so that all families have enough money to live on, rather than just survive.
• Significantly improve access to children’s mental health and wellbeing services, ensuring children have access to the enriching activities that they need to live well, receive earlier help and reduce the demand on acute mental health services.
• Access to appropriate placements for all children and young people in care and in secure settings – this includes meeting children’s individual needs and being able to live close to home (where appropriate), with placement costs providing good value for taxpayers’ money.
• The introduction of a separate judgement on inclusion in the Ofsted school inspection framework. This would mean that only schools that can show they are inclusive of children with SEND, reflecting the demographics of their local area, can be rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’.
• Creating a more inclusive mainstream offer for children with SEND. It is right that as many children with SEND as possible should enjoy the entitlement to be educated in their local communities, alongside their peers, enjoying the richest curriculum offer available. It is also right that our education communities should set a template, as far as possible, for the values of understanding, valuing and celebrating difference that we would like to see in wider society. Children and young people with SEND, when they reach adulthood, will live in a mainstream world and we need to think differently about how our education system prepares them, and prepares their peers, for that.
• Reforming the statutory framework for SEND inclusion. Better support and incentivise an inclusive system, which gives parents confidence that their child’s needs are being met and ensures disputes can be resolved in a proportionate and sensible way.
• Putting preparation for adulthood at the centre of the SEND system. This would set out and align the roles and responsibilities of key agencies in supporting preparation for adulthood, ensuring there is joined-up planning of support and options when young people move into adulthood.
• Realigning powers and responsibilities in local SEND systems. This will create a clearer and more logical alignment of powers and responsibilities which is coherent and covers the whole system, without gaps and loopholes. Proper accountability for all public bodies involved in the SEND system will foster local collective strategic ownership of the key aim of supporting children and young people.
• Reform the role of the independent education sector in SEND. to clarify the role of the independent and non-maintained sector in special/additional needs education in the future, and how that role complements the state’s core offer of support for all children and young people with additional needs as part of a strategically planned local system.
• Develop a national workforce strategy for SEND. To provide enough experienced staff, with the right skills to deliver needed support for children and young people with additional needs. The time and skills of this workforce should be used where it is needed most – focused on direct work with children and young people and in supporting and training other front-line professionals who interact daily with children. 
• More therapeutic-led reablement – intensive short-term interventions with follow-up support, which supports recovery and promotes independence after time spent in hospital.
• Develop a comprehensive long-term plan for the care workforce, building on the important work that Skills for Care have done, with an immediate focus on tackling care worker pay. This includes tackling the long-standing issue of care worker pay through the commission of an independent review to make recommendations (that are accompanied by the requisite national funding from government) on the levels of pay in the sector and how pay, terms and conditions are determined.
• Robust commissioning arrangements to ensure that the commissioning system does not create two tier systems and lead to disagreements between councils, the NHS and the care sector.
• Joint work with government to reform the approach to adult social care and improve the way that local government works with the NHS to support people.
• Focus on prevention and recovery services, including steps to support the voluntary sector to provide fast, low-level support.
• Investment in primary and community services and intermediate care that is multidisciplinary and can resolve crises in health and care, avoiding hospital admission and helping people back on their feet
• Work with local government on a renewed Local Climate Action Delivery Programme to provide the step change needed for moving forward local climate action.
• Focus the Local Climate Action Delivery Programme on ten local climate action missions to reduce emissions and build resilience to climate change up to 2050, including on housing retrofit, clean energy, nature, and green jobs. These missions are: build trust and inclusivity; rapidly retrofit social and fuel poor homes; one public estate retrofit; local power plan; electric, public and people powered transport; deliver zero waste through the polluter pays principle; protect and grow green and blue infrastructure; jobs, workforce, supply chains; jobs, workforce, supply chains; public spending to attract private investment; local climate action test.
• Translate missions to reality through Local Climate Action Plans covering all areas of the country (suggested standard framework).
• Fully funding placements for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and care leavers
• Legislate so that councillors can proactively withhold their home addresses from the public register of interests or any other publicly available source through the council. Also legislate to allow councillors to attend meetings virtually to lower barriers to elected office and allow councils to take advantage of the benefits of digital technologies as other sectors do.
• Legislate to allow councils to direct academies to admit pupils that are out of school if they are the most suitable to meet the child’s needs. They can currently only direct maintained schools, and ask the Education and Skills Funding Agency to direct academies, which delays children getting quickly back to school.
• Invest in school counselling in all state funded secondary schools, and early support hubs in the community. This will ensure young people have access to early mental health support, reducing demand on acute mental health services and ensuring young people can live happy, healthy lives. 
• Develop a truly child first youth justice system that focuses on appropriate interventions both in and out of custodial settings, supported by an increase to the youth justice grant. This will improve the experience of young people in the justice system, ensure the delivery of targeted interventions earlier on and thus reduce the need for acute interventions. 
• Commit to develop a 10 year Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy. We are calling for a new comprehensive sexual and reproductive health strategy. The strategy needs to address issues around sustainable funding, workforce challenges and fragmentation of services.
• Develop shared leadership and accountability arrangements for the UK Health Security Agency, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and the wider public health system. An approach to joint accountability presents some practical challenges, but should also be viewed as an opportunity to advance innovative approaches to collaboration. Governance arrangements must clearly respect accountability to the whole system at a local and at a national level.
• Devolve more powers to councils to help children and adults reach and keep a healthy weight. We are calling for councils to be given new powers and funding to support more children and adults to live healthier lives, including tackling the clustering of existing takeaways and restricting junk food advertising near schools.
• Implement cross-government policies to ensure health inequalities are addressed. It is unacceptable that stark health inequalities persist. The important interconnected determinants of health that could affect the change necessary for a substantial improvement in healthy life expectancy all lie outside the health sector.
• Implement fully the government’s commitment to a smokefree generation set out in 'Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation', with action to prevent smoking before it starts, support smokers to quit and stop vapes being marketed to children.
• Amend the Higher-Risk Buildings (Descriptions and Supplementary Provisions) Regulations 2023, to ensure regulators can consider buildings as a whole, which will deliver more effective building safety regulation preventing catastrophic collapses such as Surfside, Florida.
• Introduce cumulative impact assessments under the Gambling Act as soon as possible, as pledged under the recent review of the legislation, and the use of these assessments to be considered more widely as a mechanism for examining impacts on communities. This will reduce gambling-related harm.
• Introduce health as a licensing objective in the Licensing Act 2003 and the Gambling Act. New licensing powers to protect and improve public health would allow councils to fully consider the public health impacts on their local communities of licensing decisions, leading to improved health outcomes and reduced NHS costs. Remove the aim to permit under the Gambling Act.
• Empowering councils to integrate services for families, care providers and young children to give everyone the best start in life. For example, build on integrated health and education reviews to inform better outcomes for children.
• Provide community safety partnerships with the tools, powers and resources (including training) they need to respond to local issues and circumstances.
• Review existing community safety duties to cooperate between local partners with a view to rationalising and reducing them.
• A review of the statutory duties in the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 so they include responding to weather-related incidents such as flooding and wildfires with funding to support this change. We want to ensure that the statutory duties placed on fire and rescue services reflect current and future risks, and that there is funding available to services to ensure that they can provide consistency in training and equipment to deal with the incidents associated with climate change. It would make sure that the fire and rescue service is appropriately resourced to deal with a wider range of incidents.
• Create a new National Fire Board, chaired by the Fire Minister. We want to work with the Government on policy and standards to provide the sector’s voice. The Board would potentially include the National Fire Chiefs Council, National Employers and the unions to ensure that we are all working together to achieve improvement in the fire and rescue service.
• Create an independent College of Fire, separate from the College of Policing, building on the work of the Fire Standards Board. A College of Fire would be beneficial to the sector to provide consistent training and standards for the sector. This is especially important given the recent issues regarding culture in the media and elsewhere.
• Support the transition of leisure services to an active wellbeing service, building on the success of musculoskeletal hubs and cancer rehabilitation services.
• Deliver the recommendations of Cornerstones of Culture, enabling cultural services to effectively deliver inclusive growth and wellbeing objectives.

• Reduce burdens and promote innovation – ending bureaucratic reporting and exploiting the full potential of technology for local government AI. This includes: a task force on cost-effectiveness and innovation; better learning from inspections; action on unnecessary burdens and barriers; development of a complete picture of the local spend of all public sector organisations and the aims of that spend; a Local Government Centre for Digital Technology; and support, assurance and representation on digital technology.
• Reform Right to Buy to support 1:1 replacement of existing social housing to avoid continued net loss of stock. This should include allowing councils to retain 100 per cent of sales receipts; flexibility to combine receipts with other government grants; the ability to set the size of discounts locally; and exempting new build.
• Abolition of permitted development rights and reform of viability assessments for proposed housing developments, with all planning applications required to deliver affordable housing requirements as per Local Plans.
• Urgently bring forward legislation to deliver a fairer, more secure, and higher quality private rented sector, including an immediate abolition of Section 21 “no fault” evictions. 
• Further investment in social housing by allowing local government continued access to preferential borrowing rates through the Public Works Loan Board for housing, with each additional £5 million provided through this scheme estimated to provide up to £150 million in savings and additional investment into social housing.
• A programme of 100,000 high-quality, climate friendly social homes a year would improve the public finances by £24.5 billion over 30 years. This includes a reduction in the housing benefit bill of £780 a year for every new social home built and a reduction in temporary accommodation costs.
• Government support to set up a new local Housing Advisory Service. This would bring together a team of experts to provide additional capacity and improvement support tools for councils as direct deliverers of housing and development partners, as well as registered providers of social housing.
• Roll-out minimum five-year local housing deals to all areas of the country that want them by 2025, combining funding from multiple national housing programmes into a single pot. This will provide certainty and efficiencies and provide 200,000 additional social homes over a 30-year period. 
• Councils have the levers, powers and resources they require to deliver their sufficiency duties through govt reviewing, clarifying and strengthening the statutory guidance. Councils will be better able to manage the market, ensure sufficiency of childcare and quality of the offer therefore improving outcomes for young children, contributing to the closure of the disadvantage gap and securing childcare places to enable parents and carers to work.
• Councils have the resources they need to deliver youth services consistently to ensure all young people have access to trusted adults which will support young people to thrive, reducing risky behaviours and reduce costs of more acute interventions later in their lives.
• Enable councils to set licensing fees under the Licensing Act 2003. This would give local authorities the power to set fees that take account of local conditions and environment. Locally set fees would help councils and thus indirectly, their residents, because right now, many councils face shortfalls simply administering their statutory obligations under the Licensing Act. The fees have not been updated since 2005, and even if they were, they are set nationally without regard to local conditions.
• Funding health and safety at work functions through a fee for intervention approach, with this model also being explored for the funding of wider environmental health and trading standards services.
• Bring forward comprehensive reform of the taxi and private hire vehicle licensing legislation to make it fit for the 21st Century to put the sector on a modern, up-to-date footing. There is also potential work in this future reform to better consider disabilities and special needs.
• Reform the Apprenticeship Levy so that local leaders have maximum flexibility to pool funds locally to address supply / demand issues across the local area, target sectors, widen participation and for non-levy funding, unspent levy and traineeships to be commissioned locally.