Community Budgets to be rolled out countrywide

The Deputy Prime Minister has invited councils to sign up for Community Budgets. Around fifty more authorities will get Community Budgets this year and then at least a further sixty in 2012-13. This follows the success of sixteen pioneer areas that have put in place plans to support the first 10,000 families.

 These families are less than one per cent of the population, but are seen by as many as 20 different public and voluntary sector professionals at a cost of £4billion a year. A Salford family required 250 interventions in one year including 58 police call-outs and five arrests; five 999 visits to Accident and Emergency; two injunctions; and a Council Tax arrears summons. Their Community Budget led to the £200,000 cost being cut by two thirds.

 The Deputy Prime Minister has announced that four new Community Budgets pilots will be launched to explore how communities can have greater control over services through a single budget from Whitehall, as part the Government's review into local government finances.

• Two areas will be selected to help co-design neighbourhood level Community Budgets giving residents the opportunity to say what services they want, how they should work and whether they want to run them
• Two areas will be selected to help co-design a Community Budget bringing all funding on local public services from the area into a single pot to test how to create the right local financial set up to deliver better services that people want.

Community Budgets were announced as part of the Spending Review 2010 (see www.communities.gov.uk/news/newsroom/1748116) and the first 16 Community Budgets were launched by the 1st April