Local Government III - Finance

Abstract

Throughout Great Britain local government in 1973–4 was spending nearly £11,000 million on current account (that is, expenditure to meet the continuing cost of maintaining local-authority services day by day) and over £4000 million on capital expenditure (investment in physical assets such as new schools, houses, libraries and town halls which continue to be of value over a long period). These figures represented 12.4 per cent of gross domestic product and about 30 per cent of total public expenditure. Education accounted for around 36 per cent of current local-government expenditure and 16 per cent was devoted to housing. The local-government share of the national income has been increasing steadily since the beginning of the century, but in recent years it has grown dramatically and by 1975 it was of the order of 17.5 per cent when transfer payments (such as student grants and housing subsidies) are included.