Another ‘fiscal event’ that can’t give us what we need

With the 2025 Autumn Budget publication date looming, our head of policy and communications, Madeleine Jennings, shares her thoughts on the reality of what the budget can – or can’t – do for disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and where investment is really needed.

Building anticipation 

If it feels like this Autumn’s budget has been heavily trailed that’s partly because it’s happening unusually late in the year. The Treasury is also responding to criticism of last year’s comms operation by intense pre-briefing, and as a result it feels like budget predictions have been leading the news for the best part of two months.  

Expectation management has included major events such as the chancellor’s surprising early-morning speech a few weeks ago, building anticipation of some major announcements. Unfortunately, unlike the Spring spending review which was preceded by rumours of what we now know as the Pride in Place strategy, this time we aren’t expecting anything for the community sector to celebrate. More widely, the potential impact of this budget feels oversold. But the show rumbles on, drawing the attention of journalists, policymakers, pollsters and pundits of all types away from the reality that this budget can’t actually do much.  

A legacy of cuts to community services and local institutions 

On the ground, in our most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, it’s clear that the task before the chancellor is an impossible one. This budget, like her last one, will struggle to make any positive impact on the legacy of coalition-era cuts to community services and local authority budgets that have undermined the preventative fabric of the state and civil society; especially given current fiscal constraints and the chancellor’s own rules.  

It’s largely due to the 2010s hollowing-out of local institutions and community activity that the chancellor has such a mountain to climb and such a limited array of options available to her. Decisions made in those years have been a major driver of demand on the NHS, of why so many young adults are on out-of-work benefits, and of a general sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction with the status quo.  

The damage of austerity and decreasing social capital 

With news last week that the last youth centre in the whole of Thanet is set to close due to council funding shortfall, the backdrop to this budget could hardly be bleaker. The Big Local programme started just as the coalition government’s austerity programme was getting into its stride, causing many of the communities Local Trust has worked alongside to lose the services and local institutions that bound them together.  

Big Local partnerships fought hard to counter the damage that was done to their neighbourhoods, but there are only 150 Big Local areas, and similarly disadvantaged areas up and down the country had very little to fall back on. It’s these areas that make up the majority of doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods, some of which will finally now see much-needed investment through the Pride in Place strategy. But in most neighbourhoods in the UK, many of the basic features of social capital that residents had relied on to get through tough times in the past have gone.  

At the same time greater societal trends are at play – the rise of online shopping and socialising are just two ways that convenience has got in the way of getting outside and getting to know our neighbours. But the loss of community spaces, community policing, youth clubs, neighbourhood doctors and more means we are all living increasingly isolated and fearful lives. The knock-on effect is that demand for more acute or crisis services whether in health or SEN provision is costing the chancellor her chance to make an impact.

Why investing in preventative measures can have longer term savings 

Part of the solution must be investment in broad-based prevention. The Treasury has long resisted factoring in cost savings from preventative services. This blind spot is replicated by local authorities, who often choose short-term savings over long-term benefits. Cutting community services may seem cheaper now, but it risks higher costs later from anti-social behaviour, ill-health and homelessness. This Autumn’s budget is expected to bring swinging cuts as well as revenue–raising measures, putting further pressure on doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods so desperately in need of investment.  

The exception to this will perhaps be the materialisation of a slow-building rumour that the chancellor will lift the two-child cap on child benefit, which would lift 350,000 children out of poverty. With children in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods much more likely to be living in poverty than the UK average, this would be welcome news. The alleviation of poverty is a universal preventative policy, positively impacting all areas of a person or family’s life.  However, there is no single policy lever that can be pulled to undo the damage done to communities by years of disinvestment, following decades of wealth extraction. 

Looking to community-led programmes for a light in the dark 

And so, while the media and the markets focus their speculation on tax rises across income, property and savings, it’s the fundamental feeling that little, if anything, in this budget could positively change the material or experiential reality of life for the majority that I keep coming back to. 

Community-led programmes such as Big Local but also hopefully this government’s own Pride in Place strategy can make that structural difference at the hyperlocal level when they focus on building capacity in our neighbourhoods, knitting the social fabric back together. Only this place-based, skills–focused, long-term investment has the potential to shift the dial in some of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and in doing so, start to make space for budgets that can create, not just patch.   

Read more about social capital and its contribution to community cohesion in our final policy spotlight paper How investing in social capital builds cohesive communities.