Cllr Judith Blake, Chair of Core Cities UK and Leader of Leeds City Council, said: 

The Government’s announcement today of £1.6bn additional funding for local government is a welcome start, but we have to go much further and properly resource the sector to deal with Covid-19, the biggest crisis of our generation. The Local Government Association has calculated that local government already faces a shortfall of £6.5bn by 2025, having lost £15bn of government funding over the last ten years. 

All our local authority staff working hand in hand with the NHS are doing an amazing, heroic job in dealing with the health crisis, and I want to pay tribute to that. But this challenge has revealed the links between a well-functioning economy and public services which need more support.

The UK’s 11 Core Cities sit at the heart of networks of towns and cities, critical to each other’s economic wellbeing, the core of the UK’s regional economies.  As we move to deal with the economic crisis we must provide the tools and resources these places need to deliver a quick recovery.  Core Cities has just released proposals to do exactly that.