Rishi Sunak sidestepped another Tory rebellion this afternoon with the announcement of an extra £500 million in funding for councils in England. A group of more than 40 Conservative MPs had joined colleagues from other parties to warn of a crisis in local authority funding that was threatening even deeper cuts to services and council tax hikes in an election year. In a written ministerial statement, Michael Gove said this extra money, which is to cover rising costs in adult and children’s social care, was coming because ‘the government has also listened to the sector and to the issues raised by members of this house’. The Levelling Up Secretary wrote that the the funding will reduce pressures ‘on other areas such as children’s services such as home to school transport, where we recognise there has been a significant increase in pressures for special educational needs and disability services.’

The human cost of this kind of housing is far higher than that to councils

This will come as a relief to the MPs who were pushing for more funding, though of course it isn’t close to what local government leaders have been saying they need. There is also an acute awareness among Tory MPs that a lot of these costs are unnecessarily high because of the failure of their party to reform the overall long-term funding situation for adult social care and to sufficiently reform the planning system so that enough homes can be built. Another significant pressure on a number of councils is the cost of housing homeless families in temporary accommodation because there are no homes available. That temporary accommodation can often be highly unsuitable, whether poor quality and unsafe bed and breakfast accommodation, or converted office blocks.

The human cost of this kind of housing is far higher than that to councils. Gove writes at the end of his statement that he wants local authorities to produce productivity plans ‘setting out how they will improve service performance and reduce wasteful expenditure to ensure every area is making best use of taxpayers’ money’, and adds: ‘I encourage local authorities to consider whether expenditure on discredited equality, diversity and inclusion programmes meets this objective.’

It’s all very well central government complaining about local authorities managing their finances badly: many of them can be inefficient, complacent and lacking the talent they need to turn around (why would you want to work in a sector where funding has been bleeding away for years unless you had a particular penchant for misery?). But they are also at the sharp end of a great deal of inefficiency in government that has meant Westminster has not produced the reforms necessary to keep life ticking over as it should for many people.