GLA and Local Government

A Government policy statement allocates £1.3bn of the £4bn announced in the Budget for local government services to the 2025-26 LG Finance Settlement. The rest will be targeted to places that need it most. 

High Street Rental Auctions (HSRAs) have been announced by the Government. They will give businesses and community groups a ‘right to rent’ long-neglected town-centre commercial properties. HSRAs will allow local Councils to tackle persistently vacant properties by putting the leases up for auction after the powers come into force on 2nd December 2024.

A description of the process has been published by the legal firm Dentons.

Civic and community groups should ascertain how their local authority intends to apply the HSRA process.

Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP, Deputy Prime Minister, has written to Mayor Sadiq Khan to set an annual housing target of 81,000 for London.

The GLA is required to produce an updated London Plan to achieve that and the Mayor is warned that “output in the capital will have to increase markedly from the current average of 37,200 homes per year.”

London Councils chief executive Alison Griffin has welcomed the announcement by local government minister Jim McMahon of a review to identify government reforms that could better support councils, to be led by London Councils former chair, Georgia Gould, the MP for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale and Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office who issued a statement on the subject here.

Many local authorities act as trustees of charities, often of public facilities such as recreation grounds and public gardens; concert halls and buildings of historic interest; swimming pools and war memorials. The Charity Commission has written to Chief Exeutive Officers of local authorities with requirements on identification of such assets and on the way they should manage them.