Introduction

Council funding is in a perilous state and confidence in financial sustainability is low. After many years of spending cuts and delays in devolving powers to keep local business rate income, councils now face a cliff edge when their central government grant runs out in 2020. While the Government grapples with Brexit, this issue has been pushed aside – and the cracks are now visible to the public.

LGiU's Local Finance Taskforce is campaigning for a more sustainable funding system for local government, based on a broader debate about the options. Make sure your views are heard.

This consultation is based on ideas for local government finance reform outlined in the Local Finance Scorecard. We gave each idea a score based on its feasibility and impact, but your score may be different and we want to hear what you think.

About this consultation
Each page contains an overview of one option, and allows you to give a score and leave your comments. Feel free to skip pages that you don't have an opinion about – you can add as much or as little as you like.

The options:
  1. Full Business Rate Retention
  2. Allowing councils to set their own business rates
  3. Redesign of the business rate system
  4. Council tax revaluation
  5. Council tax rebanding
  6. Replacing council tax with Land Value Tax
  7. Tourism tax
  8. Local income tax
  9. Local VAT
  10. Local sales tax
  11. Splitting funding for local services and needs-based duties
  12. Place-based budgets
  13. Health and social care integration
  14. Funding councils through general taxation
  15. Municipal bonds
  16. Loosening the borrowing rules for councils
  17. Multi year budgets
  18. Social impact bonds
  19. Allowing councils to keep the proceeds of right to buy sales
How your answers will be used
We will combine the answers from the consultation with the outcome of discussions at our regional event series to present a set of recommendations to Government in the run-up to the Autumn Budget. In order to increase the pace of change, we need to be able to show the strength of feeling about this issue and have as many names behind the campaign as possible.

In order to give this work legitimacy, we need to know who has participated so we can be confident in saying it reflects the views of the sector. By participating you agree that your answers can be personally attributed to you and understand that we do not guarantee anonymity. We will validate the email address given so that others cannot answer on your behalf.

Who should participate?
We welcome views from councillors and senior officers, as well as anyone working with councils or affected by the council funding situation – eg charities, academics, sector bodies.

For more information email jennifer.glover@lgiu.org.uk

Question Title

* Please tell us about yourself

Support our campaign call
The Autumn Budget is our big chance to make sure council funding gets onto the agenda. We want to create a public list of people who support this call to build the pressure.

"We are calling for the Government to use the Autumn Budget to present a meaningful plan for how councils will be funded over the coming 3 years, and to commit to continuing central grant funding until the new system is in place."

Question Title

* Add your name to the campaign?

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