Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mrs Haynes.

And today I'm going to teach you a key stage for citizenship lesson, and we're going to be focusing today on understanding local authority spending, okay? And the key question I'm going to be asking is what are the financial challenges facing local authorities? And I should mention today that it would be very sensible if you had, as well as your normal pen, maybe you've got a pencil and a ruler.

Those might come in a bit handy a bit later on, okay? So you'll need your book or some paper to write on.

So, what do local authorities fund at the moment? We're going to start by watching a clip and I'd like you to pay really close attention, to see if you can spot lots of the things that our local authorities support, okay? Now I will say are the clip is actually about Ireland, but it doesn't make too much difference because lots of things that are funded by the local authorities are the same in Ireland as they are in the UK.

So hope you enjoy the clip, here it comes.

Okay, so quite a lot of things mentioned there.

Let's see if you can remember them, okay? We're going to do a little activity now that asks you to think about all those different things that are partly perhaps funded by the local authority.

So you can see on your screen now a drawing which is meant to be the start of a drawing of a high street of a road.

So this is where your pencil and your ruler might come in quite handy.

I suggest using as much of a whole A4 page as possible, perhaps turning your page around so that it is in landscape maybe, but it doesn't matter too much, it's up to you.

So pause the screen here for a moment and see if you can just make a similar sketch to this.

Okay, so you've come back to me now.

So you've got something similar.

Doesn't need to be a work of art.

I normally just quickly sketch this up on my white-boarding lessons, so, you know, I'm not expecting it to be perfect.

Just something that looks like a street with a road pavement, et cetera, okay.

Right, we're going to develop this image a little bit more now.

So here you can see that I've drawn on a few extra things onto my road, and I'd like you to just pause again, put on some of the details that you can see from my image here, and also with a highlighter or perhaps you could circle it or label if you'd like, I'd like you to see if you could identify the different things that we can see, which are at least in some part paid for by the local authority, okay? Now there's about 13 of them on this picture.

So see if you can get anywhere near that many.

So pause the screen, complete the picture, and then highlight or circle, the things that you think are funded in some way by the local authority, and then come back to me.

Okay, so you've come back to me.

Hopefully you've found a few things on there that you think might be funded by the local authority.

So now I'm going to share the screen with you, that shows lots of different things that are funded by the local authority, okay? Here we go.

Right, so we're just going to go through some of these things.

So at any point, just pause again and add these notes onto your diagram, okay? Right, so let's just start top left with the pink box, street furniture such as benches.

So you'll see on my picture I've tried to have a go at drawing a bench.

So those kinds of things are funded by the local authority, okay? Not always, but sometimes.

And then in the middle row at the top, we've got trees and flowers.

So find those on the diagram, make sure they're labelled, I think have some flower troughs and some hanging baskets on my diagram.

And then, perhaps you'd like to make a note on yours, that this would also include parks, okay? So the parks that's free for everyone to go and use in your town or city, okay? Then across the top, on the right-hand side, we've got roads and pavements.

Now, roads also include as the clip showed us, things like the gritter lorries that come along and put thing on the road for us to stop being too icy and too slippery in the winter.

So it's also in the local educational folks or your local authority.

Second row, down going across, starting on the left in the purple box, local and school bus services.

Now often your school bus service, if there is one for your school will be run by a private company, but those are given some financial support by the local authority to run.

Moving along then, refuse collection, so this is your bins being collected and also your recycling.

And also the refuge sites, used to be known as dumps.

So all of those kinds of things are also under local authority kind of care.

All right, then libraries, we all know the libraries.

So that's the middle row on the right.

And one of my buildings have library written above the door.

So if you spotted that, but add something like that on to your street.

Okay, third row down on the left-hand side, green box, council offices.

Again, one of my buildings had council, I think above the door, right? So the council offices hold quite a lot of different workers in it.

So it might be worth just pausing and jotting these down as I say them.

So inside your council office, you've got social workers, adult social care team, council employees who run the residential care homes, and home care for the elderly.

That's just some of the workers who work within the council office.

Middle one, third row down, food safety officers.

Now you may not realise that this was being done by your local authority, but these food safety officers have a crucial role.

They make sure that the food that we're served in cafes and restaurants is up to standard, is kind of clean.

So they give advice on food hygiene and actually have the power to close the premises if standards are not being met.

Car parks, as the last one, along on that third row down.

Car parks, now not the private ones run by other companies, but some of the car parks you might have in your town and city centres are run and owned by local authorities, but sometimes managed by private companies.

So they will basically pay a rent to the local authority in order to use that land and they might be the ones who then charge you for that parking.

The next one along there at the very bottom.

Now, bottom row on the left, is council houses.

So you'll see that there's one of my properties on my street, I tried to make it look like a house, got little curtains and stuff and chimney with some smoke was trying to make it look like a home.

So about half of all of our local authorities, no longer own any council housing.

But since the 2017 Homelessness Reduction Act, local authorities have a legal duty imposed on them to ensure that they prevent and relieve homelessness.

So just something that local authorities still have to be aware of to support the homeless and people in our communities, okay? Lights.

So the street lights mentioned again on the video as well, lighting up our nights, I think you saw it on the video, so those are maintained and installed by our local authority.

And then it says signs.

So signposts, the brown ones that are shown for kind of tourist location, signs for car parks, which is what I had on my drawing.

And it's kind of road signs, all of that are done by your local authority, okay.

So I hope you had a few of those and you've been pausing that during my notes there and adding on as many as you could.

Okay, let's move on.

Right, so this is an image of the Local Government Association building, the LGA building in London.

The LGA is the national voice of local government working with councils to support, promote and improve local government, okay? I'd like you to pause and just make a note of that so that you've got that as a note in your book, thank you.

Okay.

So the LGA has published a document called Local Government Funding, Moving the Conversation on, which is something that we will be using a bit later on in today's lesson.

I wanted to show you this one.

So this is a diagram that shows the proportion of money that is spent on the different services provided by local authorities funded through our council tax.

So it's interesting to have a look at that, and we're often asked, in key stage four to analyse data.

So one of the things you might notice when you look at that is perhaps the percentage increase that's occurred with spending that's been happening towards social care.

Over the years, you can see that the green area has increased.

So now it's 57p of every pound.

And also you might like to look at some of the smaller things there, for instance, eight pence in every pound range through the council tax goes towards parks and libraries and museums. It's quite a small percentage, isn't it that? But, it goes to things like parks that we all enjoy being able to use.

Right, so we're going to have to do an activity now that uses the worksheets.

So it says here, read the first two pages of the worksheet and answer these questions in full sentences.

Or you can wait to hear me read through the worksheet first.

So I'm just going to read out the questions.

Number one, what is the funding gap the LGA is forecasting by 2025? What actions does the publication say local authorities have taken to avoid financial difficulties? That's number two.

Number three, explain why central government would not want local authorities to cut services? Okay, now I anticipate that you would probably need to have a couple of sentences for the first two questions and then may be a small paragraph for that third one.

So if you're going to stay with me now and hear me read through the worksheets, then just pause the screen here for a moment and make a note of those three questions.

Okay.

So what I'm going to do is read through the pages of the worksheets that relate to these questions.

Anything that you can see in bold type appears on the glossary at the end of the worksheets, okay? And I do an explanation there for it.

So I'm simply going to read this through at the moment.

Quoted from Local Government Funding, Moving the Conversation on.

Our analysis shows that local services face a funding gap of 7.

8 billion pounds by 2025.

This represents the difference between the cost of funding services at the same standard as in 2017 to 18 against funding that we estimate will be available to do so.

This gap corresponds to keeping local authorities services standing still, and only having to meet additional demands and deal with inflation costs.

It does not include any extra funding needed to improve services or to reverse any cuts made to date.

Reducing funding means reduced capacity to invest in prevention.

Ultimately, this means worse outcome for struggling children and families and the negative impact on the health of our population.

Still continuing from the same document.

Councils have innovated, re-imagined and changed the ways they work to deliver significant savings and efficiencies.

There are now 550 shared services arrangements with council sharing the cost of a number of different services.

Local government services have also become more efficient.

For example, since 2010 council planning departments have cut spending by half.

The bottom line is that while local government has coped well, become more efficient and represent good value for money, services, such as social care, children's services and homelessness support are under unbearable pressure.

How local authorities are funded.

Now this slide is just a reminder of the information that I gave you when we did our taxation lesson which was my last lesson.

Local authorities gain most of their income through two taxes that citizens pay.

These are council tax, a tax on the value of property and a share of business rates, a tax on the value of business premises.

In addition to this local authorities receive a grant of money from central government and several other sources, e.

g.

money raised from rent collected on council owned property.

Okay, so if you'd like to now pause and have a go at answering those questions, if you stayed with me to listen to me read out those worksheets, then please do that now.

Next slide, I'm going to show you the answers.

Okay.

Right, number one, what is the funding gap? The LGA forecast, a funding gap of 7.

8 billion pounds by 2020, assuming that they are still funding services at the same standard as in 2017 to 18.

So notice there, I give the figure, and I also give the further explanation.

Number two, what actions does the publication say local authorities have taken to avoid financial difficulties? I'm using a direct quote here which is always a nice thing to do if you can.

Local authorities say that they have quote, innovated, re-imagined and changed the ways they work to deliver significant savings and efficiencies.

An example of this is that they now have several shared services arrangements across different local authorities.

I'm only expecting this to be a short answer.

If there were lots of marks awarded to that question, then I would have gone on to explain what shared service arrangements are and probably given you some examples of further savings.

Number three, so this is the one I said you'll probably would need a paragraph to explain it.

And the question starts with the word explain.

Explain why central government would not want local authorities to cut services.

Central government would not want local authorities to cut services because citizens would all complain that their bins were not being collected or that the street was not lit at night.

Local authorities would say they have no choice due to funding cutbacks.

Then citizens would direct their anger towards central government.

This anger could result in voters swapping their allegiance to a different political party in the next general election, which the government would not like as they may lose power.

It could also lead to mass protests and civil unrest, which the government would not wish to see as it may be forced to take action to restore the peace.

This can be a risky strategy for governments, okay? So I hope you can see there that I've developed that answer all the way through so that this is full as possible.

Maybe just pause for a moment, if you want to ensure that you've included some of the points there, if you haven't done already.

Okay, moving on.

Pause the video to complete this task.

Read the final page of the worksheet called Depth Study.

What are the financial challenges facing Stroud District Council? Then think about the following question.

So I don't need you to write this down.

I just want you to think about it for me.

What will be the financial effect on Stroud District Council when it is not in the pilot scheme next year? Okay, that will make sense when you read that final slide.

I'm going to read the final slide now.

So stay with me if you'd like to hear me read it through.

Depth Study, what are the financial challenges facing Stroud District Council? Stroud's statement of accounts 2018 to 19 shows that they had 881,000 pounds left unspent at the end of the financial year.

This does not seem to be in keeping with the findings of the LGA, which would have expected an over spend.

However, the account states that, during the year, Gloucestershire has been part of central government's pilot for a hundred percent business rates retention that's keeping the money.

This means that all business rates collected within the county are retained within the county.

Stroud District Council received an additional 897,000.

That's what the K means, thousand pounds.

Gloucestershire is not a pilot region in 2019 to 20.

And this growth is therefore a one-off.

The council is also heavily in debt and it cannot increase taxes as levels of taxation are set by central government.

Okay, so just think about that question now.

What will happen when Stroud District Council is not part of that pilot next year? Just look at those figures.

Pause to have a think for a moment.

Okay, so I'm guessing you've probably spotted that if you haven't been part of that pilot, it wouldn't have had that money left over as an over spend, which is that money that was left over.

In fact, it would've spent more than it received.

Okay.

Right, now, this is the final task of today's lesson.

Answer this question or wait to hear me explain how to structure your answer.

You should aim to have at least three paragraphs with a different point in each.

The question is, agree or disagree with the following statement.

Local authorities have a more direct impact on the everyday life of citizens compared to central government.

So I'd like you to use all of the knowledge that you've gained today.

And I would expect you to take around 10 minutes to complete that answer, those three paragraphs.

So if you'd like to pause now and go and do that completely on your own, then please do.

What I'm going to do now is just talk through how I would structure my answer to that question.

So I would start each point in a new paragraph, and I would make it clear right from the offset, that I'm either going to be agreeing or disagreeing.

Okay, not matching them up, just making sure I stick to one side or the other as requested in the question.

So my first sentence starter might be something like, I agree that local authorities have a more direct impact on the everyday life citizens compared to central government because, and then I would go on, make my point, give my reason.

And then I would add an example to explain my point.

And then I will look to see if I could include any quotes or statistics that are related to the point I was making.

And then finally in that same paragraph, I would just do a linking sentence that makes sure that I'm demonstrating again, that this is the reason why I'm agreeing with that statement that's in the question.

Then I would start my next paragraph with a connecting sentence that says something like, another reason I agree with the statement is that, and once I've done that again with another paragraph, I've got my three paragraphs, I would probably conclude with a sentence that just perhaps explains which of the reasons I feel is the most compelling as to why I'm saying I agree or disagree, okay? It might be quite good practise.

If you wanted to have a go at writing both sides of that argument, three paragraphs for agreeing and then three paragraphs for disagreeing.

So if you'd like to now go and have a go at that, pause the video here for me now.

My next slide will have the potential answers on.

Okay.

Final slide for today then.

Here are some suggestions for each side of that discussion there.

So here you can see on the agree side, I've got local services are the ones that we have direct frequent access to such as refuse collection or recycling.

And then I would probably relate to that, the reference to the LGA pie chart, which shows that it's 7p of every pound spent on this.

Another reason I would say I'm agreeing with that is that we rely on these local services for our health and wellbeing.

Then there are things like access to the parks and adult social care.

And then my third paragraph might be something along the lines of, we need these local services for our personal safety.

For instance, street lights and our gritted roads.

And on the disagree side, I've got central government actually set our taxation rates such as income tax and national insurance.

So therefore they have more of a direct control over us, direct impact on us.

Also, I've got central government decide on overall policy in areas such as education and the environment.

So those policies are directed from government, even if some of them may be implemented by other authorities.

And then finally on the disagree side, I thought perhaps we could use something like central government makes new laws and we actually have to obey those laws in our areas such as the COVID lockdown, that although local authorities again put those laws to action, they've come from central government initially.

making the main laws that we have.

Okay, so if I was going to do that, I would have used a paragraph that said something like I agree that local authorities have a more direct impact on the everyday life of citizens compared to central government because local services are the ones we have direct frequent access to.

I'll then give the example of the refuse collection and recycling, add my statistic from the pie chart, and link it back to the question saying something like, this is a reason why it could be argued that local authorities have a direct impact on citizens.

I then start my next paragraph.

Okay, now, if you have written those answers, then by all means pause and add any extras in that you'd like to now, but I'm certain that if you are able to show that to your teacher, send it to a teacher, they would love to see what you've written today, and why not have a go at the exit quiz now to finish off my lesson today.

I really hope you've enjoyed it.

And the dog is still fast asleep, and I will see you all again for my next lesson, which will be looking at privatisation and nationalisation of different services.

Okay, bye for now.