English local authorities’ total net current service expenditure was 2.4% – or £2.8bn – higher in real terms in 2023/24 than the previous financial year.
The total expenditure was £123.4bn, according to Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) statistics.
Excluding education, total service expenditure was £83.5bn in 2023-24, a 2.9% and £2.4bn increase in real terms compared to 2022/23.
Social care was the biggest driver of the increased expenditure. There was a 7% real terms increase in adult social care spend, up £1.5bn to £23.3bn.
Children’s social care expenditure was up 6%, by £821m in real terms to £14.5bn, according to the MHCLG data.
Education and social care services combined continue to represent over half of all local authority service expenditure, as illustrated in the below MHCLG chart.
Housing services, excluding Housing Revenue Account), increased by £359m – or 14.8% – in real terms to £2.8bn. This was driven by an increase in expenditure on homelessness services, which was up 27.2%, an increase of £361m to £1.7bn.
There were real terms declines in expenditure in the categories of highways & transport, public health, and cultural, environmental & planning.
The MHCLG data showed that there was an overall £125.2bn increase across all local authorities in England in 2023/24 using the broader measure of revenue expenditure, which accounts for other current expenditure in addition to service expenditure and non-current expenditure. In real terms, this is 0.5% higher than in 2022/23 and 7.5% up from 2019/20.
Revenue Account non-ringfenced reserves are estimated by MHCLG to have totalled £30.4bn at 31 March 2024. This is a decrease of £2.9bn from the £33.4bn at 1 April 2022, but is still “substantially higher” than the £23.5bn at 31 March 2020, the department said, showing that reserves had increased during the period of the Covid-19 crisis.
MHCLG’s statistics have been compiled from the Revenue Outturn returns submitted by 368 of 411 local authorities in England in 2023/24, and use estimation to provide totals.
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