Worthing Borough Council Leader asks government to support local councils in the budget

10th October 2024

Dear Deputy Prime Minister,

As the new Labour Leader of Worthing Borough Council, may I congratulate you and the Prime Minister on your election success in July. I look forward to working with you and your team, including our two new MPs for Worthing Dr Beccy Cooper and Tom Rutland, on the ambitions for our borough.

It’s no secret that the previous Conservative government has stripped our public services, including local government, to the bone and that huge financial challenges still lie ahead of us at a local level as we strive to carry out the priorities that we were elected on.

Ahead of the budget later this month, I am writing to ask that local government and public sector reforms are prioritised and that local government is placed high on the agenda. Whilst recognising the state of the national finances, we desperately need changes to be put in place to ensure that we are able to keep supporting our residents.

At present the models we are working to with regard to funding settlements from Central Government are simply unsustainable. Finding out the sum of our settlement so close to our budget setting period and for one year only means that we have to take short-term decisions and are unable to plan and invest on a longer-term basis.

Many of our residents are still struggling considerably - with demand for temporary and emergency accommodation extremely high and putting huge pressures onto our council budgets. We need rapid reform in Housing and Planning to ensure that as many people as possible have a place to call home.

In total, our housing challenges through supported, temporary and emergency accommodation alone are expected to cost Worthing Borough Council an extra £1.5 million this year over a budget that has been increased each year, which is unsustainable. And while it was welcome to hear that the Household Support Fund will be continuing, we are still left facing massive budget shortfalls year on year.

We would also ask ministers to extend the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) on a multi-year basis and for the fund to come directly to district and borough councils - this fund remains vital to our efforts to support residents. Nearly 150 households in Adur and Worthing that are eligible for Pension Credit but have not claimed it, have been contacted by the Council’s Proactive team toencourage them to apply since news of the means testing of winter fuel payments was confirmed.

This would have been impossible without the UKSPF for this year, which is due to end in 2025, and the Household Support Fund - we have to secure this funding from the receiving authority, which is West Sussex County Council as the upper tier council for our area.

We are using these funds to drive this urgent work and hoping to use it further to support those pensioners just missing out on claiming pension credit - however these payments being just one off and single year limits how much we can do with it. Whilst we recognise difficult decisions are having to be made, we are acutely aware of how many just above the pension credit threshold will be left to face fuel poverty this winter and urge the government to reconsider their plans to limit this to just those on pension credit.

We would also like to see an extension to the qualifying benefits including Personal Independent Payments to support disabled pensioners, who in particular will be more vulnerable to fuel poverty. Through work done by the Council’s Proactive teams - we know there are already 627 pensioners currently living in fuel poverty across Worthing. Of the 2,613 low income pension-aged households across Worthing - 816 are not eligible for pension credit and will miss out on the winter fuel payment.

In terms of house building - we welcome the Government’s ambitions to get the country building again. However here in Worthing we are geographically constrained with the South Downs to the north and the sea to the south. Of course the challenge here is not just new homes - we need genuinely affordable homes.

This presents major difficulties for us as we are heavily developed and still facing attempts from housing developers to build on the protected green spaces that we have designated in our Local Plan - despite the fact that Worthing residents have less than a snooker table of green space per person. There are many brownfield sites to develop in the town and provide the housing thatwe desperately need, alongside the necessary infrastructure to support it. I therefore ask your team to consider measures and regulation to ensure that developers are no longer able to manipulate the planning system to get permission for these houses and then just sit on sites to protect their sales values - this should not be allowed to happen in a national housing crisis. We also need to be able to hold developers accountable to deliver the infrastructure that is promised in planning applications and need stronger measures, including financial penalties, to ensure these conditions are adhered to.

There are a number of other changes that would have a positive impact on our council services and residents, such as removing the housing benefit subsidy cap for temporary and exempt accommodation so that councils are fully funded for the cost and to expand the Homelessness Prevention Grant. We would also urge the Cabinet to consider removing the two-child benefit cap as soon as possible, to ensure that as many of the children in our communities are lifted out of poverty and fulfil the child poverty reduction agenda that you have committed to.

Deputy Prime Minister, we are committed to serving our residents as best we can and whilst we are trying to pull every internal lever to support our communities - there are so many pressures such as these that are outside of our control. For example, decarbonising our borough is made even harder due to the fact the new burdens funding allocated by the previous government doesn’t meet the costs of providing a new food waste service announced for roll out in 2026. Councils need to receive enough money when the Government imposes a new duty such as food waste recycling on them, so they are no worse off. However we at Worthing Borough Council are facing further budget shortfalls to implement this new service - and that’s just to roll out the collections with diesel, not electric vehicles as we would have hoped.

So in summary we need your support in three key ways - a longer term settlement period, more funding for the very specific problems we face, and changes to stop developers manipulating the markets. We ask you to consider these when looking at reform to the public sector and, crucially, in the budget later this month.

Yours sincerely,

Cllr Sophie CoxLeader of Worthing Borough Council