Does funding follow need? An analysis of the geographic distribution of public spending in England

How much public spending does each area receive? Local authority level estimates of health, police, school and local government spending

“…For instance, while more-deprived areas receive more funding, for local government and police services, they do not receive as high a share of the national funding pot as the formulae used in official spending needs assessments suggest they should. This echoes the findings of our earlier work (Ogden et al, 2022) that the funding systems for local government, public health and the police did not properly reflect differences in assessed needs across places and were unresponsive to changes in the relative needs of different parts of the country.…”

“…Similarly, we exclude housing, as we do not have comprehensive information on funding allocations to specific places or assessments of the 'needs' of particular places. Issues around the allocation of funding for housing improvement and construction are discussed in Ogden et al (2022).…”

“…In earlier work (Ogden et al, 2022), we explained and assessed the current approaches to allocating funding for a number of key public services (health, local government, police, housing and schools), and looked at the resulting funding allocations for 2019-20. We found that the funding systems for councils, public health and the police were not fit for purpose; they did not properly reflect differences in assessed needs across places and they were unresponsive to changes in the relative needs of different parts of the country over time.…”

Path Clearing, Policy Acceleration or Trend Reinforcement: Potential Implications of Selected Local Government Responses to Covid-19 in the UK

“…The impact has varied widely between policy domains, with large cuts for discretionary services such as parks, leisure, and culture and relative protection afforded to certain mandatory provision like social care and children's services (Fahy et al, 2023). Similarly, there have been widespread geographical disparities in spending levels, with an average 32 per cent decrease incurred by councils serving the most deprived communities, compared to 17 per cent for those with the least deprivation (Hastings et al, 2017;Gray & Barford, 2018;Ogden et al, 2022).…”

“…Nevertheless, the scope and nature of support remained much the same as previously; any changes tended to involve expedited implementation rather than shifts in policy design, the introduction of alternative measures, or a revised underlying ethos. However, this is hardly surprising given the relative lack of attention in official policy discussions to alternative narratives or 'paths' regarding local economic development and the meagre scale of the resources available (HM Crisp, 2022;Goodwin et al, 2022;Gore & Wells, 2022;Gray & Broadhurst, 2023;McCann, 2022;Ogden et al, 2022).…”