In October 2024, we reported how the wellbeing of children and young people was at risk from cuts to local services, according to a warning from the Children’s Commissioner.
Our analysis showed local authorities were making £3bn in savings that financial year, but still faced a funding shortfall of more than £5.7bn by 2026-27.
Local government experts said councils had carried out "all of the easy cuts" years ago and were now struggling to protect vital children's and adult social care services.
Children's Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza (pictured above) said: "Children must not pay the price for balancing budgets."
Local government minister Jim McMahon said the new government had inherited a crisis and there was "no shying away" from the scale of it.
Our investigation concentrated on the upper-tier authorities in England and Wales, as well as the single-tier councils in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Between August and September 2024, we approached those 218 councils, asking for details contained in each authority’s ratified budget for 2024-25 and their medium-term financial strategies.
We asked the councils to provide:
- The total net revenue budget requirement for 2024-25.
- Details of the total amount of planned savings for 2024-25 and how those savings will be achieved.
- Whether the council has approved the use of general or earmarked reserves to balance the 2024-25 budget, and the net use of both.
- Details of whether the council had held or intends to hold an emergency financial budget.
- The council’s predicted cumulative shortfall for the 2026-27 financial year.
In some cases the council supplied the agenda papers for the authority’s budget. In those cases we filled in the accompanying sheet manually and sent our findings back to the corresponding council for verification.
Regarding the two-year shortfall recorded in the dataset - this was a cumulative shortfall. So if the council predicted it would need to find £2m in 2025-26 and £3m in 2026-27, we recorded this as a £5m cumulative deficit.
If a council sent us a range of predictions for its two-year shortfall we recorded the worst-case scenario in the dataset and put the best-case scenario in the notes section for context.
In some cases, councils did not answer a particular question. In that case we entered DNA (‘Did Not Answer’) into the dataset. If we entered their details manually and they did not confirm our findings, we entered DNC (‘Did Not Confirm’). Where a question was not applicable to that particular authority, we entered NA (not applicable).
Population figures corresponded to data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (‘Dataset Estimates of the population for the UK, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland’, Dec 2022). This excluded Westmorland as well Furness and Cumberland, both created in April 2023. These local authorities’ population figures were obtained from their respective websites.
- The net budget requirement for the councils who responded totalled £70.28bn, i.e. the amount they would need to spend to fund the services they offered for 2024-25
- To try and meet that cost, councils approved at least £3.04bn in savings for 2024-25
- And they dipped into their reserves, approving the drawing down of £1.08bn, including £816m in earmarked funding and £266.79 from general reserves
- By 2026-27, the cumulative shortfall facing those councils would stand at £5.73bn, according to local authority estimations – when we asked the same question in the previous year, councils had predicted a £5.29bn shortfall for 2025-26.
- Of the 143 councils that responded to the same questions in 2024 and the previous year, the two-year cumulative shortfall figure was greater for 89 of them (while it fell for 58)
We produced this story pack and this dataset.
- Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza
- Local Government Information Unit Chief Executive, Dr Jonathan Carr-West
- Local Government Association Chair, Councillor Louise Gittins
- Lynn Perry, Chief Executive of Barnardo’s
- UNISON head of local government, Mike Short
- Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT
- Mikey Erhardt, Campaigner at Disability Rights UK
- Councillor Andrew Morgan OBE, Leader of the Welsh Local Government Association
- Local Government Minister Jim McMahon
- Leader of Shropshire Council, Lezley Picton
Statements
- Bradford Council and Bradford Children and Families Trust
- Newham Council
- Carmarthenshire Council
The Shared Data Unit makes data journalism available to the wider news industry as part of the BBC Local News Partnership. Stories written by partners based on this research included: