Council cuts: UK local authorities respond to budget cuts

Town halls around the UK have faced demonstrations in recent weeks as local councils have begun to pass austere budgets reflecting the coalition Government’s sharp funding reductions.

Under a tight financial settlement announced last December 13, local authorities in England face an overall cut of 27 per cent to their “formula grant” from Whitehall over the next four years.

The government’s preferred measure of the impact of the settlement is councils’ “spending power”, a figure which includes not just the formula grant, but also council tax revenue and other grants received by local authorities.

This map, based on data released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, shows that no council will see a fall of more than 8.8 per cent using this measure, after a “transition grant” given to the most severely-affected authorities is taken into account. However, this may disguise the impact of the cuts on deprived regions that are more heavily dependent on the formula grant.

Click on a region to see how its local authority’s sources of revenue have been affected by the funding cuts, and how it has responded with cuts to local public-sector jobs and services.