The House | How Austerity-Hit Councils Are Passing The Buck – At The Expense Of The Most Vulnerable
Illustration by Tracy Worrall 14 min read1 hr From schools to social care, healthcare to housing, local councils have arguably been the biggest victims of all the funding cuts we’ve seen over the last two decades. Chaminda Jayanetti reports on how they have been left in a tug of war with other state bodies over who funds the state provision needs of the most vulnerable in society With public sector budgets having never truly recovered from the austerity cuts of the early 2010s, a growing dynamic in English public services is different organisations trying to push costs onto one another so they don’t have to pay up themselves. At the epicentre of this are councils, arguably the biggest victims of austerity when funding cuts are set against rising demand. Local authorities are engaged in constant battles with other state entities – and indeed sometimes internally, in a kind of budgetary civil war – over who has to fund which needs, some of which are statutory requirements. And often, it’s members of the public …
