- Conference
- 2025 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 1 January 2025
- Decision
- Carried
Conference condemns the actions of successive Conservative governments over the last decade that has resulted in local authorities facing an existential crisis.
For years, UNISON and the Local Government Association have demanded a sustainable, long term funding settlement and updated distribution mechanism to allow councils to actively support their communities.
Now there is a change in government, Conference believes we must seize this opportunity to see through meaningful reform to Council funding.
Conference recognises the financial crisis in local government which continues to result in service cuts, and lost jobs for our members. The latest iteration of UNISON’s funding gap research showed that councils across the UK faced a collective funding gap of £4.3bn for the financial year 2025/26, increasing to a cumulative gap of £8.5bn by 2026/27. One in four local councils have indicated that they are likely to require emergency financial support from Central Government by the end of 2026/27 unless there is a significant improvement in their funding.
The situation is dire. For the 2025/26 financial year, councils face a collective funding shortfall of £3.4bn—a figure projected to surge to £8.5bn by 2026/27. Research conducted by UNISON in July 2024 highlighted significant funding gaps within the North East. The highest three were: Gateshead (£36 million), Newcastle (£24 million) and Durham (£17 million).
At a recent budget meeting, Newcastle Council has reported cuts amounting to a staggering £381 million since 2010; an average of £2,629 per household. These cuts clearly have a direct impact on local services. In the Northern region, 72 youth centres have closed (with only 18 remaining) and 54 council-run children’s centres have been lost. Furthermore, council-run libraries in the region have dropped from 204 to 147 (a 27% decrease) and public toilets have fallen by 43.
Conference notes the outcome for local councils of the October 2024 budget from the new Labour Westminster Government. Via the Barnett formula an additional £3.4bn was allocated to Scotland, £1.7bn to Cymru/Wales and £1.5bn to Northern Ireland.
The Scottish Government promised councils a £1bn uplift in funding when compared to their 2024/25 funding settlement and ended its council tax freeze policy. However, Conference is acutely aware that years of under-investment combined with continued high levels of demand for council services mean that many councils will still contemplate cutting more jobs and services even if they significantly raise their council tax bills, with one in four Scottish councils admitting that they may not be able to balance their books in 2025/26. Similarly, in Cymru/Wales, despite a 4.3% increase in the settlement to Welsh councils, this uplift alone is still not enough to relieve the growing pressures that councils are experiencing.
Although the October 2024 budget allocated an extra £1.3bn, this increase pales in comparison to the overall £3.4bn gap faced by councils nationwide. While the additional funds help address challenges in social care, housing, and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), they are insufficient to counteract over a decade of deep cuts and growing service demands.
The additional £1.3bn in grant funding for local councils in England was provided by the government alongside plans to alter the system of redistribution to recognise the impact of deprivation on local service pressures. Conference believes that whilst the government recognised the need for extra money to support councils deal with soaring pressure in adult social care, housing services and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), the level of funding was not enough to allow councils to stabilise after years of rocketing costs and demand, never mind allowing them to begin to restore important services after the huge damage inflicted by austerity. Austerity measures and subsequent cuts to funding have significantly impacted LGBT+ services, leading to reductions in services, staff cuts, and strained financial resources for voluntary and community organisations. This has had a particularly strong impact on the LGBT+ community, potentially pushing them further to the margins of society and exacerbating existing inequalities.”
A fairer funding model is urgently required. The government’s consultation on a more equitable distribution of funds – prioritising councils with higher levels of deprivation – must be fast-tracked.
A recent publication by the Local Government Association (LGA), the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace), and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountability (CIPFA) presents a compelling case for further reform. It calls for stability, a reversal of austerity impacts, enhanced accountability and transparency, and better alignment with local priorities. The report also underscores how the increasing reliance on council tax, due to a lack of alternative funding, exposes the weaknesses of an outdated system.
Council tax increases cannot be the way to achieve fundamental funding reform. In February 2025 five councils were given permission to increase their council tax by more than 5% without a ballot, and nearly a quarter of London councils have asked for emergency funding from the Government. The Local Government Association assert that there is a £600 million gap in the funding just to pay for the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions.
Conference is keenly aware of how local councils are central to the Westminster Government’s ambitions to improve the country; from driving economic growth, solving the NHS crisis, through to tackling crime and reducing carbon emissions. Conference also notes how positive previous investments in council-run services have been. A report by the Institute for Financial Studies in 2024 estimated that for every pound spent at its peak in 2010, Sure Start council run children’s centres averted approximately 19 pence in public spending on youth justice and children’s social care, equivalent to £500 million (in today’s prices) of savings per cohort attending at the time. Whereas cuts in council services since 2010 have had severe economic and societal costs. A 2024 report from Warwick University compared neighbours who were and weren’t affected by almost a third of youth centres in London closing. The teenagers affected did 4% worse in exams and were more likely to commit crimes, costing the country nearly £3 for every £1 saved.
Conference is therefore committed to demonstrating to MPs both the moral and economic arguments for significant levels of extra investment in local government.
Conference supports the call for massive re-investment in local government from the centre, along with longer term and fairer funding models, because there is money in the UK economy: in 2024 the FTSE 100 companies paid £80 billion in dividends to shareholders and the major UK corporations and companies hold close to £1 trillion in liquid assets that are not being invested. We also continue to support a positive vision for local government which recognises the fantastic work local government staff do and roots local public services in an ethos of democracy, equality and public ownership.
Conference welcomes UNISON’s continuing campaign on local government funding over the last year, including our new and updated council cuts website, which showed the scale of the problem and also showed what these cuts meant in practice, and which once again led to thousands of emails being sent by UNISON members to national politicians across the UK calling for more funding, alongside our widespread lobbying work at national, regional and branch levels. UNISON’s work and campaigns on funding received significant media and social media coverage in 2024, playing a key role in raising political awareness.
Given the critical state of local government finances, Conference believes our negotiating priorities should be advocating for a significant boost in funding for local councils to support children’s and adult social care, SEND provision, and housing support; ensure that councils are recognised as essential partners in national missions such as economic growth and planning; and, pushing for a larger, multi-year funding settlement that reflects the true financial pressures on councils.
Conference calls on the Service Group Executive to:
1) Continue to campaign strongly for proper recognition of local government services, highlighting how central councils are to helping the Westminster Government deliver its main priorities in office;
2) Strengthen the funding reform campaign by advocating for a sufficient, fair, and long-term settlement that genuinely meets councils’ needs;
3) Working with the devolved nations/administrations, generate a range of political activity in parliaments across the UK calling for more funding for council services, working with Labour Link to impress upon the Labour Government in Westminster the importance of rebuilding the range of public services that councils provide back towards 2010 levels;
4) Collaborate with politicians at every level to secure decisive action from the Treasury and ensure that local councils remain central to the national agenda for renewal and economic growth.
5) Encourage regions, branches and members to undertake lobbying of MPs in their local constituency surgeries making use of the campaigning and lobbying guides that have already been developed which emphasise the positive difference that local councils can make to society;
6) Work with branches and regions to develop local no-cuts campaigns and campaigns for restoration of lost central government funding involving other trade unions, local community and voluntary organisations and local politicians opposed to cuts;
7) Encourage branches to work with local LGBT+ community groups to secure funds to provide services for local LGBT+ people
8) Raise awareness about the human consequences of service cuts while highlighting the critical value of local government services; Produce materials for regions to use including case studies on specific cuts, their impact and successes in fighting them, for use in regional events bringing together workers and communities with elected politicians to campaign for the reversal of cuts;
9) Produce materials for use in branches that clearly show how services could be both funded and improved by raising taxes for corporations and the richest UK citizens.
10) Convene meetings of those branches that face either 114 enforcement notices or make requests for emergency government funding to support them in campaigning locally, regionally and nationally against cuts resulting from those decisions including potentially opposing where agreed high rises in council tax rates;
11) Prepare a model motion for branches to use with councillors including demanding an end to austerity, reversing the cuts, restoring lost pay, insourcing, and a minimum pay rate of £15 an hour;
12) Work with UNISON’s policy team and the TUC to publicise new research by the New Economics Foundation that demonstrates how additional council spending on preventative services leads to significant cost savings and therefore justifies additional investment;
13) Continue to raise awareness of the importance and contribution of local government workers to our society with the Local Service Champions campaign and provide opportunities for UNISON members and members of the public to lobby for more council funding;
14) Promote Local Government careers by increasing the profile of local government work through initiatives such as ‘Local Government Champions’ to inspire the next generation of workers;
15) Leverage transparency through continued use of Freedom of Information requests to update the Council Cuts website, thereby bolstering lobbying efforts with up-to-date evidence; Conduct a further Freedom of Information request and use the data to update the Council Cuts website to illustrate the scale of the funding gap faced by councils across the UK, along with other key metrics of financial distress, and encourage the public to lobby national politicians for more council funding;
16) Empower activists through advanced training on local government funding, enabling them to effectively scrutinise council budgets, and continue providing lobbying guides for Councillors and MPs; Continue to provide high quality local government finance training to help branches across the UK to understand, interrogate and influence their local council’s budgetary process;
17) Work with the NEC to organise a national meeting that highlights the reality of the cuts, and campaigns to bring services in house or to defeat or reverse cuts;
18) Work with the NEC to organise a national demonstration (and potentially regional demonstrations) around demands to return the lost billions to our communities, rebuild communities through democratic public ownership, and end the rise in poverty and inequality by redistributing wealth from the rich and business.
Local Government Service Group Executive (Motion 18)
Birmingham UNISON Branch (Amendment 18.1)
National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender plus Committee (Amendment 18.2)
Northern Region (Motion 23)
