The committee published a report, ‘Community Budgets’, which says that departments should be more willing to fund CBs in local areas; calls for more data sharing between agencies; and suggests creating a mechanism to share savings between central and local government.
This can only be achieved, Betts said, if the “pressure comes from the top – the prime minister”.
Betts added: “Government has to make it very clear that this is not a DCLG initiative, but an overarching policy, and not a pick-and-choose [exercise] for departments.”
Some departments, he said, “don’t get the whole principle behind community budgets”. Problems have been reported to the committee concerning the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and the Department for Work and Pensions.
The report also calls for every department to have a named official serving as a point of contact for local areas, to help resolve the “constant issue” of officials within departments “not wanting to take responsibility”.
Local government minister Brandon Lewis said a new Public Service Transformation Network, featuring “expertise from across the public and private sector to provide direct links between government departments, councils and local places”, is “making best practice available to all councils”.