LAST week the Conservative Government announced its first budget. I’d prefer to be writing about a good budget that will deliver for our residents, but unfortunately that is not what the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought before Parliament.

There are some positive steps within this budget but taken as a whole package of measures it smacks of too little, too late with too many significant omissions and oversights. As Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, I must judge this budget by its impact on local authorities, and on our residents here in our city.

We, as the Labour Group of Councillors on Brighton and Hove City Council, welcome the Government’s commitment to increase investment in infrastructure, transport and the NHS. Obviously, the Chancellor did read some of our manifesto.

We know that long-term investment in public services and infrastructure is in dire need, so the Government starting to release some funds for local priorities such as boosting connectivity and filling potholes is a positive step, even if we have had to wait a decade for it to come.

Frankly, the spending and borrowing increases within the budget are an admission that austerity has failed. You can’t cut public services and local authority budgets to the point of near collapse and expect nobody to suffer.

I’m pleased we can finally look forward to some investment, but for some of our communities across the country this is all too late.

Even with some welcome investment, this budget still fails to deliver for local authorities and the residents we serve.

We are still not seeing the adult social care funding we so desperately need. This is one of the biggest crises we face as a country and the strain remains on local government.

Demand for adult social care, both in terms of pure numbers and in complexity with our ageing population, is rising exponentially, whilst funding has fallen, and the financial burden placed squarely on local authorities who have faced agonising budget cuts.

It is also a fragile market with staff often undervalued and underpaid, not to mention the challenges that Brexit will bring to the care workforce.

With adult social care we face a perfect storm, and this budget offers nothing so much as a lifejacket to help us weather it.

We’ve heard the Prime Minister’s bold promises of a national plan for adult social care, and yet the Chancellor’s budget brought forward no such plan, and no increase in funding.

We are still not seeing a serious effort to invest in combating the climate crisis, despite a climate emergency and the Government pledging to make the UK carbon neutral by 2050 – I’d like to see how they plan to deliver on that pledge if they won’t put their money where their mouths are.

Locally we have set a target of making Brighton and Hove carbon neutral by 2030. We take that target seriously.

Our climate assembly is coming together and will be run through Ipsos Mori in the coming months, and in our council budget we allocated significant funding for carbon neutrality projects.

I wish the Government shared our ambition in this area, but if the budget is anything to go by, they are a long way off.

We are still not seeing an increase to local authority budgets even as council core services across the country continue to be under significant pressure, having lost nearly £15 billion of core government funding over this decade, and nearly a quarter of staff since 2012, according to the Local Government Association.

Whilst this budget does allocate some funds towards affordable housing and rough sleeping, much of it is a re-announcement of existing funds, and it is still a drop in the ocean considering the scale of the national housing crisis we face.

As a local council, we are looking to build at least another 800 council homes and 700 genuinely affordable homes, and we have opened a 365-night-a-year shelter and are seeking additional provision to counteract rough sleeping.

We need more powers from government to bring soaring rents in the private sector under control and prevent people being priced out of the area, and this budget didn’t allocate enough new resources, funds or powers to help local authorities tackle the housing crisis.

We welcome the recognition that Covid 19 will impact on the vulnerable and businesses and the additional hardship funding may help some economically vulnerable residents. However, a national fund of £500m will be spread very thin across the whole country. Furthermore, there was a lot of big talk on Covid 19 in this budget announcement, and yet no additional funding for public health.

We do welcome some of the measures in this budget, but ultimately it is yet another budget delivered by this government that fails our city and fails our residents.