Councils in England are warning that homelessness services costs are due to increase by 27.2% in the next three years.

The warning comes ahead of the Spending Review, with the Local Government Association saying there are “extra cost pressures of almost £8bn”.

This total is about addressing new pressures that will face councils in the next three years, it does not include current pressures.

Faced with these significant spending pressures over the next few years, the LGA is warning that vital services, such as care for older and disabled people, child protection, homelessness prevention, waste and recycling, and road maintenance, continue to face an uncertain future as a result.

To illustrate the scale of these extra demand and cost pressures facing councils, the LGA projects that council tax income would need to rise by a quarter over the next three years to pay for them.

Cllr James Jamieson, LGA Chairman, said: “Councils continue to face severe funding and demand pressures that will stretch the local services our communities rely on to the limit. Securing the long-term sustainability of local services must therefore be the top priority in the Spending Review.

“If we are to come out of this pandemic with a society that is truly levelled up, the vital services that councils provide must be at the heart of it. Councils need certainty over their medium-term finances, adequate funding to tackle day-to-day pressures and long-term investment in people and transforming places across all parts of the country to turn levelling up from a political slogan to a reality that leads to real change for people’s lives.

“Levelling up has to also mean a radical reset of the relationship between central and local – building back better means building back local.

“With adequate resources and freedoms, councils can continue to provide local solutions to the national challenges we face and ensure all of our communities are able to prosper in the future.”