Local authority budgets 1983: No reduction of services

Abstract

The block grant system, based on grant‐related expenditure assessments for each local authority and introduced by the Conservatives in 1981, is now in tatters. The Government seems to have decided that, in the interests of an illusory short‐term control, it was worth destroying the basis of a system that would have achieved the desired result ‐ of reducing local expenditure ‐ more slowly, but more effectively. How has this come about?