Council service cuts: Why they are forced to spend less on bin collections, potholes and street lighting

Published

2 years ago

March 24, 2023

admin

Councils in England are now spending almost two-thirds of their budgets on social care, and it’s costing them almost £4bn more than 10 years ago.

That leaves less room in the budget to pay for other services provided by local authorities, like bin collections, road maintenance and public parks. And it’s rural councils with the oldest populations which are being stretched most.

Councils that have made cuts say they are responding to a combination of pressures, including rising inflation, the sharp reduction in government grants since the 2010s, and the increasing demands of caring for an aging population.

Local authorities in England spent more than £30bn on social care in 2021/22, out of £49bn total spending on all services, excluding education. That’s an increase of almost £4bn, or 15%, since 2012, even after adjusting for inflation.

Meanwhile, spending on transport services has declined by £1.2bn, spending on culture and the environment has reduced by more than £1bn, and spending on housing has gone down by £300m in real terms.

See what your council spends on social care

Three councils – Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Halton, in Cheshire, spent more than three quarters of their total 2021/22 budgets on providing social care.

Halton spent the most, at more than 80%, a massive increase from just 52% ten years ago. The £92m they spent in 2021/22 is £20m higher in real terms than what they spent in 2011/12.

Over that period they have cut spending on street lighting by £1.7m – a huge two-thirds reduction – and road maintenance by £600,000, a 25% cut.

Only nine areas spent less than half of their 2021/22 budgets on social care, and seven of those were in London. A handful of them are actually spending less than they were 10 years ago, breaking with the national trend.

In Tower Hamlets in east London, for example – the local authority with the youngest average age in the UK – they spent £13m less in real terms on social care in 2021/22 than they did in 2011/12, while spending about £130,000 more on road maintenance.

Why is this happening?

Over the past decade there has been a change to how councils are funded. The reduction of government grants, beginning in 2013/14, meant they needed to raise more funding directly.

There is a limit to how much councils can raise in council tax – capped at 5% a year – and not all councils raise it by the maximum amount.

‘The government have to take it more seriously’

Councillor Rob Moreton, an independent councillor in Cheshire East, told Sky News about his personal experiences of trying to get jobs done amid tight council budgets:

“I’ve been trying to get this road resurfaced for four years now. I just get constantly told there’s not the funding for it this year ‘We’ll try and get it on a scheme for the year after, no money available’.

“Social care is very important. But potholes are also important if it’s costing car drivers thousands of pounds in broken springs, punctured tyres, and everything else.

“It’s totally unacceptable. We need more funding from central government. In 2020 we got £19m, then it was reduced to £15m and this year is £17.3m. The government are now producing £200m nationally for councils, but for Cheshire East that’s £2.3m, which is less than the £5m they’ve cut from us in recent years – we’ve had a 41% cut.

“The government have to take it more seriously and start funding councils. They have lost touch with local councils.”

Councils also have legal obligations that they have to fulfil, which limits where they can make savings.

For example, they must provide social care to those young and old people who are eligible for it.

Who’s eligible for council-funded social care?

So if more people become eligible for social care – which happens naturally as the population ages – council costs start to rack up. This has left some councils with difficult financial decisions to make, particularly those with older populations in rural areas.

Areas where more than a quarter of the population are over 65, like Devon, Suffolk and Dorset, which were among the highest social care spenders in the map above, have seen their social care costs rise by more than 40% in real terms since 2012.

If councils are limited on how much more money they can bring in, and they need to spend more on social care, they are forced to make cuts elsewhere to make their budgets work.

Councillor Tim Oliver, chairman of the County Councils Network, told Sky News: “Over the last decade, councils in county areas have seen a significant decrease in government funding at a time when their elderly populations have increased dramatically, with the number of over 65s in those areas rising by 1.1m from 2011 to 2021. At the same time, demand for children’s services has also increased rapidly.

“As a result, those councils now spend 64% of their budgets on average on these two service areas, with councils having to balance their legal duties to care for elderly and young people eligible for care with the funding they receive.

“Increasingly, this has meant money has been re-routed from bus subsidies, libraries, and community health services to make up the shortfall elsewhere.”

Jackie Weaver, a former parish councillor who became temporarily famous in 2020 when she was told that she “had no authority” over a meeting of Handforth Parish Council, in Cheshire, in a popular social media video, told Sky News that a contraction in services at county and district council level mean that town and parish councils are having to fill the gap:

“All the kind of community stuff that is visible, that makes us feel good, doesn’t happen anymore. They don’t have any money to do it.

“What we are seeing is that town and parish councils are stepping forward and picking up the slack. Over the past 10 years they’re recognising that nobody’s going to do it for us. If we want an improved transport scheme in the town, or a neighbourhood plan, then we’ve got to step up and do it ourselves.”

We put our findings, and the responses from councils, to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. A government spokesperson said: “We are making an additional £5.1bn available for councils in England in the next financial year.

“We are also providing multi-year certainty to local government, outlining spending over the next two years to allow councils to plan ahead with confidence.”

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Why data journalism matters to Sky News

UK

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Published

2 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.

A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.

Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.

The funeral – in pictures

Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.

His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.

Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.

Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.

Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.

Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.

‘More than a friend’

In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”

Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”

Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.

‘With us forever’

Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.

“Their spirit will be with us forever.”

The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.

He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.

“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”

The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.

No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.

Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.

Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

5 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

6 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.