The Cost of the Cuts: a social impact tool for local authorities
A major research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has catalogued and explored the implications of local council savings over the past five years. The aim of the project was to analyse the extent to which the range of measures – activities focused on reducing future needs and costs, reductions in services, changes in eligibility thresholds and consolidations of facilities – has impacted on poorer groups of service users. The result is a social impact tool which enables councils in England and Scotland to replicate a key part of the quantitative analysis undertaken for the study.