Warnings over public services as local councils face funding shortfalls

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/30/councils-warn-over-funding-shortfalls-service-cuts

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Bus services, libraries and leisure centres are at risk of closure over the next few years as English councils have to deal with rising demand for elderly care and a giant budget black hole, the Local Government Association has warned.

The LGA said councils in England face a funding gap of £5.8bn between March 2014 and March 2016, which could put frontline public services under threat of having their funding cut.

It said the integration of health and social care next year is "vital to save the care system from collapsing".

Sir Merrick Cockell, chairman of the LGA, said the scale of the challenge facing local authorities next year is stark.

"Council finances are on a knife-edge and the old way of doing things – including the way we care for our elderly population – just won't work anymore," he said. "Next year will be a make or break moment for adult social care, for local services provided by councils and for the NHS."

It comes as the government braces for the result of a strike ballot among public sector workers today. Unite, which opens its national conference in Liverpool, will reveal whether its 70,000 members in local government in Wales, England and Northern Ireland have voted to take industrial action over pay on 1 July.

Unison, the NUT and the GMB have already held strike ballots, with their members voting in favour, in protest at a pay offer worth 1% for most workers.

In an article in the Morning Star newspaper, Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, said: "For our UK members, there can be no doubt that if a Tory government is returned to power in 2015, the mindless austerity that the coalition has inflicted upon our people will be but child's play. They have worse in store."