And ministers will ignore MPs. Again. What is the point? (And the same politicians then wonder why democratic structures and institutions are breaking down)
“Link between paying taxes and quality of council services in England ‘broken’, say MPs”
You can read the report published by the Commons HCLG Committee here.
“What’s the HCLG Committee?”
“The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee scrutinises the policy, administration and spending of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. It is is made up of MPs from across the House of Commons.”
Above from the Committee’s landing page
After questioning the ministers and other interested persons, they produce reports that produce a few headlines in the trade press and then gather digital dust on the virtual shelves.
“You sound cynical”
We’ve been here before. Have a browse of this handful of select committee reports:
- Financial cliff-edge for hundreds of councils looms in 2026 – where is the Govt’s response? – June 2025
- ““Our inquiry heard that the government is concerned about local authority finances. But the lack of urgent action to come forward with a plan to address the fast-approaching cliff edge for under-pressure authorities would seem to suggest it is comfortable with the current state of affairs as normalised background noise.”
- ‘Chronic lack of accountability and transparency in local government finance will hamper pandemic recovery’ February 2022
- “Local authorities now spend as much as eight out of every ten pounds of core funding on social care services. Even then need is still unmet, and that inevitably squeezes other cultural, planning, and regulatory services people rely on.”
- “Local services will continue to decline until Government tackles £5 billion funding gap” – August 2019
- “Government in denial over state of council finances” – February 2019
- Devolution in England: the case for local government – September 2014
- ‘Government must tackle the ‘English Question’ and devolve financial powers’ – July 2014
- “The CLG Committee calls for the transfer of a range of tax raising powers to local authorities, including business rates, stamp duty, council tax and other smaller taxes and charges, along with greater flexibility to borrow for investment”
Some groups have responded already to the latest report from the Housing & CLG Committee – such as the London Councils.
“‘The local government funding system is fundamentally broken’ – London Councils responds to new parliamentary report”
Above – London Councils press release 23 July 2025
At the end of 2024, the Institute for Fiscal Studies produced its own report exploring the issues and options. The IFS identified:
- a lack of clarity on future funding availability
- a limited degree of revenue-raising power compared with local governments in other countries
- English local government has a too limited financial incentive to improve local socio-economic outcomes
- local government should have greater involvement in a wider range of local services and public spending
- financial and political accountability may be confused, with the remits overlapping and little understood by voters and other stakeholders
Above – IFS (2024) p5 / p6pdf
How many times do MPs have to keep going on about the same issues over-and-over again before HM Treasury will shift its position?
By providing local government with much greater independence over revenue raising, and at the same time much stronger scrutiny (and even veto powers to full council meetings), the relationship between local councillors and local residents is potentially strengthened because it’s not something that would be within the ministerial remit – and MPs would soon find out that ministers could not ‘go in and sort things out’ every time a pot hole needs repairing.
In the meantime places like the Cambridge Biomedical Campus will continue to build gleaming sci-tech buildings, and the roads leading to them will continue to deteriorate.
The ministerial instinct is to announce a ‘pot hole fund’ (notice the number of times it gets mentioned in Budget speeches)
Autumn 2024: “For too long, potholes have been an all too visible reminder of our failure to invest as a nation.”
Spring 2023: “The Spending Review allocated £500 million every year to the Potholes Fund but today I have decided to increase that fund by a further £200 million next year to help local communities tackle this problem.”
Autumn 2018: “Every Member of Parliament will testify that potholes are high on the public’s list of concerns.”
Budgets should not need to mention special pothole funding – instead ministers should deal with the tougher root cause of the problem which include:
- overhauling how local councils get their funding and resources to remove some of the dependencies on central government handouts
- overhauling national and regional transport – including rail-based public transport and micro-mobility vehicles, active travel routes (mindful of the number of journeys taken by car that are under 5mins or under a mile), through to alternative structures and systems for delivering small packets in the last mile – something that could easily be imposed as an additional levy on online orders. (Which on its own could help rebalance the playing field in favour of local shops over internet shopping giants).
I remain to be convinced that Treasury Ministers and in particular senior civil servants change the culture within their institutions. One way of helping with this would be prioritising future interchange programmes to start with HM Treasury, to get civil servants out to local council finance teams outside of London, and local government finance officers in councils seconded into The Treasury.
Because otherwise we’ll be stuck in this doom-loop as every so often people find out anecdotally how things like the Business Rates system do not function in the way they think they function. One for people who wonder where all of the money collected in Cambridge in business rates revenue ends up.
Food for thought?
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