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Regional Equality & Diversity Partnership


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Community Budgets to help the vulnerable

Summary: 16 areas, including Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, will be given direct control over local spending in their area, free of centrally imposed conditions as part of the Spending Review.

From April 2011, this first phase of 16 areas, covering 31 councils and their partners, will be put in charge of Community Budgets, pooling various strands of government funding into a single local bank account for tackling social problems around families with complex needs.

The government is proposing to give communities more power to target spending on key local priorities, despite reductions in spending. Communities will be able to hold their councils to account in making sure tighter funding gets spent better.

Around £8 billion a year is spent on around 120,000 families that have multiple problems, with funding only getting to local areas via hundreds of separate schemes and agencies. Despite this investment, these families' problems continue. Services need to join up and intervene earlier so that families are given the chance to turn their lives around. This integrated, early intervention approach will also drive down costs.

Community Budgets, which the government intends to roll out nationally by 2013-14, will put councils and their partners in the driving seat by pooling funds for tackling these families' needs into one budget so communities can develop local solutions to local problems.

The Government believes all 16 initial areas have demonstrated that they have strong local relationships involving communities, voluntary sector and public sector players, which put them in a strong position to operate the first Community Budgets from 2011-12.

Source: One East Midlands

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