The Devolution White Paper and Police and Crime Bill give an opportunity to redraw the crime reduction partnership landscape, to deliver on the Labour Government’s ‘safer streets mission’, according to the Local Government Association (LGA).
It calls for ‘a single stream of long-term sustainable funding for three to five years for community-safety related services, paid directly to councils or community safety partnerships (CSPs) rather than for example PCCs (police and crime commissioners). The LGA also proposes more funding to increase CSP capacity (such as data analysts, wardens, and CCTV), ‘with local discretion about how it is used to achieve the government’s mission to ‘take back our streets’. The LGA asks for reform of the duty and partnership ‘landscape’, ‘to ensure CSPs are equipped with the powers and partners to deliver’.
In England and Wales, councils face an estimated £1.9 billion gap in 2025/26, rising to £4 billion in 2026/27, £6.0 billion in 2027/28, and £8.4 billion in 2028/29. Councils face a combined funding shortfall of £20.3 billion, according to LGA, in a submission letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, ahead of the Spending Review 2025. It asks that local government have ‘financial sustainability …. help deliver the Government’s missions’.
The LGA complains that ‘councils’ ability to cope with current cost and demand pressures is hampered by the years of funding reductions in the 2010s’, and claims a ‘risk of systemic financial failure facing the sector’. The funding reductions and cost and demand pressures over a prolonged period has impacted the scale and quality of local services, and most councils are experiencing staff recruitment and retention difficulties, according to the submission. The LGA calls for ‘a more preventative approach across all public services’.
Specifically in terms of preventing crime, the LGA points to services such as those ‘that address adverse childhood experiences and improve mental health and wellbeing’. To reduce re-offending, central Government could fund councils ‘to give training and employment to ex-offenders’.
As for Labour’s proposed Respect Orders instead of antisocial behaviour orders, the LGA asks that councils be funded to carry out risk assessments of those given such orders by the courts; and as those given such orders may be told by courts to undertake alcohol/drug treatment, that also should also be funded, the LGA says.
As for knife crime, the LGA says that trading standards departments ‘play a vital role in the regulation of the sale of knives to young people, yet such regulatory services have ‘an ageing workforce’ and ‘a shortfall of new recruits’. The submission also pleads for money for emergency preparedness, and Local Resilience Forums.
Safer streets
The LGA notes that Labour ‘has clear ambitions to “take back our streets”. This mission and its stated aims cannot be achieved without local authorities acting as key partners. But councils need resources and not just duties, alongside radical reform of the partnership landscape.’
Work with PCCs
The LGA says it’s working more closely with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) on joint areas of interest; first, to draw up a model data sharing agreement for local partners, which ‘will require nominal funding from government’.
For the submission in full visit the LGA website.
Picture by Mark Rowe; public space CCTV, Shrewsbury.
