Summary

2007 is a critical year for council funding. Ministerial decisions about the choice of formula and data will affect the amount of funding that individual councils receive in the next three financial years; 2008/09, 2009/10 through to 2010/11.

We want to persuade the government to achieve better and more accurate formulae which reflect the needs of our local communities.

Local authorities need to be confident that the formulae accurately at predict the needs of their local communities. However, not only are we some considerable way off this position but the government has failed to ensure the calculations used to distribute funding to individual councils are 'fit for purpose'. Technical weaknesses in the data are known to under- and over-predict need, causing funding to be targeted unfairly.

Why does the children's social services formula predict a fall in need in areas where child protection registrations have been rising over a period of many years? Why does the younger adults' social services formula fail to reflect the extent and range of needs in urban areas? Why do population data under-record certain groups of residents and fail to measure the impact of highly mobile populations on local services?

All these questions remain unanswered. On the eve of the first three year finance settlement, there will continue to be legitimate doubts about whether the children's and younger adults' social services formulae are really up to the job of targeting funding fairly.