Funding Public Services: postcode lotteries or local responsibilities?

Where should decisions on our taxes and public services be taken? Should services be funded on a comparable basis nationally from national taxes? Or should councils and other local public sector organisations have responsibility for funding services in their area, and discretion over what to spend and how to raise their revenues? Is more local responsibility a good thing that will empower communities to improve and tailor services? Or does it simply risk worsening ‘postcode lotteries’ in access to services and the taxes we pay? Would it address concerns, implicated in the Brexit vote, that decisions are made by a distant and out-of-touch elite? Or would it widen inequalities, breeding further political divisions?

These questions and more will be discussed at a presentation and debate hosted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and CHASM.

Full details are available at on the IFS website.

Places are free, but you must register – please book your place by visiting www.ifs.org.uk/events/1607 

This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. The 16^th annual Festival of Social Science takes place from 3—10 November 2018 with over 300 free events nationwide. Run by the Economic and Social Research Council, the festival provides an opportunity for the public to meet some of the country’s leading social scientists to discover, discuss and debate how research affects their lives. View the full ESRC Festival programme of events at the University of Birmingham.