Autumn Statement 2023 - letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer

Dear Chancellor of the Exchequer, 

This week’s Autumn Statement comes at an important time for Islington, as we look to agree a balanced budget again, all while protecting frontline services amidst further expected real terms cuts to our core budget.

We're working to create a more equal Islington, where everyone has the best chance to thrive. Islington is a wonderfully diverse borough, with strong communities and many opportunities.   

But sadly access to those opportunities is not always distributed equally. For example, 28 per cent of children under-16 live in income-deprived families, the highest percentage in London. We want to do more, and we will do everything we can to help people thrive in our brilliant borough. 

We need Government to help with our work, and in this week’s Autumn Statement, we ask for three things to help us build a better Islington for local people. Help us build more much-needed council homes, help us maintain council homes, and fund us fairly. 

Help us build more council homes 

Good homes transform lives. We’ve built hundreds of much-needed new council homes, and we want to build hundreds more – but interest rates, inflation and spiralling building costs have made this increasingly difficult.   

The Housing Secretary has said that he wants 30,000 new social homes to be built each year. We want to play our part in that but we need you to make it easier for Islington and other local authorities to borrow money at affordable rates to build much-needed new council homes, against the strong security of decades of future rents from those homes. 

Also - give us full flexibility about how we can spend money from right-to-buy sales to fund new much-needed council homes. At the moment red tape holds us back, stops us spending the money we have, blocking us building more homes. If this changes on Wednesday, we can start working on new schemes as early as next week. 

Help us maintain council homes 

We are proud to be one of the biggest social landlords in the country - we manage more than 26,000 council homes across Islington, and the money to maintain and update them comes from rents. Rent freezes and caps in recent years have helped tenants struggling with cost of living, but they also mean that our Housing Revenue Account will have £1.7billion less in it over the next 30 years. That money is needed for new kitchens and bathrooms, to tackle damp and mould, for insulation and much more. We need your help to tackle this long-term shortage in funding for maintenance, caused by Government policy, which will cause poorer conditions in council homes in years to come. We need a rent settlement for the next five years so we can plan effectively. In the long run, maintaining council homes will save the Government money – if councils can’t afford to maintain council homes and sell them, more families will be pushed into the private sector where the much-higher cost of rents, compared with council rents, will be picked up by Government and taxpayer through higher housing benefit costs. 

Fairer funding 

Local government has seen some of the largest declines in funding of any part of the public sector since 2010. Islington has been forced to make savings of almost £300 million due to central Government’s underfunding. National social care funding is at crisis point, and the way adult social care is funded nationally needs a complete overhaul to make it sustainable. In Islington alone, the cost of adult social care is currently increasing by approximately £20 million each year – this is much more than the money raised by the adult social care precept and adult social care grants, which means we have to find savings elsewhere to balance our budget. The current piecemeal approach to funding is not sustainable – we need an ongoing settlement to create a resilient adult social care system that’s fit for the future, and guarantees everyone the care they deserve. Also, we call on Government to reverse the cuts to Islington’s central Government funding since 2010, and increase local government funding in real terms to help protect local services from further cuts. 

These three things in the Autumn Statement would make a huge difference to lives, and futures, in our borough. 

Yours sincerely, 

Cllr Kaya Comer-Schwartz, Leader of Islington Council 

Cllr Diarmaid Ward, Executive Member for Finance, Planning and Performance