Hello, my name is Mrs. Harris and I'm the person who's going to be guiding you through today's learning.

I'm really happy that you've chosen to come here and I'm really looking forward to this.

This lesson is called "What Do Local Councils Do?" And it comes from the unit called "How does Local Democracy Work?" By the end of this lesson, we're going to be able to say, I can describe some of the key services a local council provides and how these are funded.

Some of this learning might be challenging.

It might be the first time you've come across it, but that is okay 'cause I'm here to guide you through it.

Let's get going.

Let's start with our key words then.

I'm going to say the word and you are going to repeat it out loud.

You could say it to the person next to you or you can say it to me on the screen.

Are we ready? Tier.

Local council.

Services.

Income, and tax.

Let's start with our first learning cycle then.

What services do local councils provide? In the United Kingdom, there is a central government, which is right in the middle of all the decision-making in the UK for laws and policies and ideas about how to improve the country.

And they are the government, they govern, which means they manage and control the whole of the UK state.

Now, central government also devolves some of its decisions.

It devolves some of its authority to regional governments.

If I was devolving power to you, I would say, "Here you go, this is your responsibility.

You can make your decisions about what you do about X, Y, and Z." And that's exactly what central government do.

They pass on some of that authority to regional governments and it's usually about things like health or education or transport.

And if you look at this image here, you've got the central government linking to regional government.

And three of the regional governments are, in the UK, are the Welsh Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Scottish Parliament.

And there's gentle reminders that to devolve means to transfer some powers and give authority to make decisions.

In addition to the central and the regional government then, we also have local governments.

Now, as the name suggests, local government, they are the people who manage and control the local areas.

So instead of managing the whole of the UK, they are more concerned and they make decisions for local areas like towns and cities and counties.

Now, local governments, they have a really important job because they govern lots of different things that affect us every single day.

They manage things like schools, making sure that people have school places, they manage things like housing and that includes supporting people without homes, they manage things like public transport, the collection of bins and then what happens to that rubbish and the recycling, as well as things like parks as well and social care.

And there's Laura to remind us.

"Social care is the support provided to help people with personal needs like older people or disability assistance." Sometimes, in fact, most of the time, you'll hear local governments called local councils, but they also go by the name local authorities.

Now have a look at this slide here.

This is just some of the examples provided by local councils.

So this isn't every single service provided, this is just a selection.

Take a few moments to read through just some of the services that your local council provides.

You can pause the video if that gives you more time to do it.

So there's some really interesting things on there, aren't there? Now we've discussed things like public transport and schools, but there's also things like food licencing.

So all those takeaways and all those market sellers who sell food, they have to go through a licencing process to make sure that they are safe to be able to be selling food and that's part of your local council's services that they do.

So let's have a quick check for understanding then.

Which of these pictures represents a service that a local council might provide? You've got A, refuse collection, B, public cemeteries and C, housing.

Are you ready? It is all of them.

The council would provide services for all of these things here.

Without our local councils, there would be so many services that we wouldn't have access to.

For example, we've talked about waste collection, refuse collection, rubbish collection, recycling in the UK.

All of that service there is coordinated and is planned by local governments, local councils.

They're also responsible for huge amounts of safety things, for example, maintaining safe roads, making sure that there's pedestrian crossings, street lights, as well as things like new buildings.

Making sure that if somebody wants to put a building up, that the place that they're doing it is actually an appropriate site for that to happen.

Look at Andeep here.

He says, "When there was a pothole on my road," you know, a big pothole in the road that cars could go over and damage tyres.

He says that it was the local council who came to fix that, preventing loads of damage to cars.

That's a really, really important job.

John here says, "A new housing estate has just been built near me.

The local council made the builders add more green spaces to the plans." So they've got huge checklist of things that people have to agree to when they're putting a building up.

And the people responsible for holding them accountable, holding them responsible for that is the local council.

Leisure spaces like our parks and our open spaces, they're looked after by local councils and things like your libraries and your museums, all those spaces that we like to use for our leisure, for our enjoyment.

Local councils, they also do things like big community events.

And if you read down here from Laura, she says, "My local council organised a seaside day in the city centre." It's amazing, in the city centre there was a seaside day, "it had sand, deck chairs, food, music and entertainment.

Loads of people went, it was a really good day out!" All of those kind of cultural activities, those events that bring communities together, the local council are really at the centre of so many of those.

Now, as well as enjoyable things and things that help us in our daily life, local councils also have to give their permission for other people to provide services and that's what we call giving a licence, giving their permission for that to happen.

Licences can be given for so many different kinds of things.

For example, food places as I've already mentioned, cafes, takeaways and pub, things like food hygiene and also giving a licence permission to be able to sell alcohol.

They also give out licences for taxis and that's to make sure that there's safety on the roads, but also for passengers and pedestrians as well.

Licences are also given for children.

Now some children they have jobs, don't they? Some people might have part-time jobs when they're a child.

Some children work in entertainment so they'll work on TV or they'll work within theatre and children are not allowed to do that without a licence from their local council.

Now that sounds like the council is trying to stop it happening.

Actually, things like licences are there to ensure the safety.

So if you are thinking about child licencing, the local council will contact the people who the child is working for to ensure that that child will be safe when they're doing their job.

It's also the same for street sellers as well.

They need a licence.

They need permission to be able to sell if they're in a market or if they're doing a pop-up shop somewhere else as well.

Look, John here is saying, "My brother needs a licence to do his part-time job.

It tells his employer how many hours he can work and when." And that's really important because that gives his brother that protection 'cause his employer knows you can't ask him to work over a certain amount of hours a week and you can't ask him to work at certain times of the day if he should be at school for example.

Let's have a quick check for understanding then.

So about licencing.

Some of the licence that can be granted by the local council are to food outlets, taxis, children and? You can either tell me on the screen or you can tell the person next to you.

I'll give you five seconds to think about it.

Okay, so some of the licences that can be granted by the local council are to food outlets, taxis, children, and? Street sellers.

That's right.

Yeah, well done.

Let's keep going then with some of the things our local councils provide us, the services that they provide us with.

So Andeep says, "The local council registers all births, marriages and deaths in the area.

This is a legal requirement set by central government." So the local government has certain things it must do as directed by the central government.

In other words, it's a legal requirement, a lawful requirement that they do that.

Laura says, "The local council makes sure our landlord is treating us fairly, including making sure the landlord carries out any repairs needed." It's so important if people are living in a house that is owned by somebody else, but they're paying to live there, it's so important that they've got that protection that if their repair needs doing that the person who owns the house does that repair.

And sometimes that isn't the case.

What Laura is saying here that the council acts up her family, gives her family that support and tells the landlord no, this repair has to be done.

So by working closely with people who live in the area, local councils are really trying hard to make sure that the services they provide do meet the needs of that community.

And remember, not every community is the same.

Not every local area will have exactly the same needs and that's why it's so important that the local government listen to people who live in that area 'cause they are the people who know best.

A quick true or false then.

So this is about people who are tenants.

Now a tenant is a person who lives in a property, but they are borrowing it, they are loaning it from somebody else who owns it.

So if you are renting then you are a tenant.

So here we go.

Landlords have the responsibility to treat tenants fairly.

The local council helps to make sure this is happening.

Is that true or is that false? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it.

Right, let's check that answer then.

It is true, it's absolutely right.

And the local council will support tenants in making sure that their properties, the places that they live, are safe for them to live.

So let's go to your first task then.

So this is a matching task.

All right, so down the left hand side of your screen, you should be able to see five different rows and they're entitled social services, waste management, housing, highways and travel and registry offices.

So match those descriptions with the local council service on the left hand side and you can do that by drawing lines between them.

Pause the video now to give you the time to do this and then we'll go through the answers together.

How did you find them? Did you find the clues within? So when we're talking about social services, did you look out for that key word social in there? Let's have a look.

Here are the answers.

So social services is supporting individuals, families, and communities by addressing personal and social needs.

Waste management is collecting, disposing, and sorting of recycling, household and business rubbish.

Housing is managing council homes, preventing homelessness, providing home advice and enforcing rented homeless standards.

So just like with Laura with her family where the local council was supporting her with their landlord.

So it's one of their jobs, isn't it? Highways and travel is all to do with roads.

So loads of different things, roads, paths, all sorts.

And finally, registry office registers, doesn't it? Marriages, birth, deaths.

And also if people, like it says here, want to become British or move to the UK, registry offices help sort that out as well.

Really well done on that, fantastic job.

Let's move on to our second learning cycle then.

What are the different types of local council? Now this can vary across the UK so it can be slightly different depending where you are.

The ways that I'm gonna guide you through today are the ones that are most commonly seen across the UK.

So local councils operate, the way that they're managed and organised is different in many different ways.

Now, in some parts of the country you'll find that there's just one tier.

Now, not this kind of tear down the face when you're crying but tier like layers or levels.

All right, and in some areas there's just one tier.

So have a look at this image on the screen.

There's local government and there is single tier.

So one tier.

Now there are three different kinds of single tier, that's one level of council.

They're called unitary authorities, London borough councils and metropolitan borough councils.

The City of London is divided into 32 areas, which are called boroughs.

And each borough has its own local council.

Now unitary means single, whole or undivided.

So if you think about a unicycle, it has one wheel.

So a unitary council is a single layer, one council, providing all of the services to that area.

And there's Andeep reminding us of that.

A metropolitan borough council deals with an area that is very large and usually has a lot of people living there at high population because a metropolitan area is a large city and all of the surrounding towns and villages in that locality.

So a quick check for understanding then.

In a unitary authority, there is just one council providing all of the local services.

Is that true or is that false? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it.

All right, so in a unitary authority, there is just one council providing all of the local services, true or false? It is true.

Yeah, unicycle, one wheel, unitary authority, one layer, one council providing all of the services.

That's right.

Now in other parts of the country, the local government has got two tiers.

So before, there was a single tier, now you've got two tiers.

And that means the responsibility for the services is split between these two tiers.

One of those tiers is the county council.

Now that is the larger area that we're talking about there.

And they cover things such as education policies or school policies across the whole of that area.

Things like waste disposal.

So not just the collection of the bins that actually falls to a different part, but the getting rid of the rubbish once it's being collected.

And also things like adult social care as well.

For each county council, there are lots and lots of other councils, the second tier of that local government system underneath.

So there's one county council and then many, many district councils.

District councils are sometimes called borough or city or town councils.

And they deal with smaller areas even more so than the county councils.

And this is things like actually collecting the waste, which then gets passed at the county council to deal with the disposal of it.

They deal with environmental health.

So if there is an outbreak of rats or mice or insects, it'll be the district council that would then go and deal with that.

Things like your leisure facilities as well.

So sports centres, your all-weather pitches kind of thing is dealt with by the district council.

For example, if you lived in Edinburgh, all the services there are provided by the City of Edinburgh Council.

That is a unitary authority, it's a single tier local government system.

If you lived in Blakenhall, your services will be provided by Wolverhampton City Council.

It's a metropolitan borough council.

It's a large area, lots of towns, and cities within that area.

So it's a single tier local government system.

If you lived in Warsop, in Mansfield, your services would come from Nottinghamshire County Council and Mansfield District Council.

That, as you can see there, is a two tier local government system.

Now Warsop Council is also served by something called the Warsop Parish Council and we'll come back to that in a little moment.

Now, do you remember how I said each county council has multiple district councils that it works with? Well, in Nottinghamshire County Council area, there are actually seven borough or district councils within it.

So the first layer there is the Nottinghamshire County Council and then there are seven others underneath that as well.

And the most interesting fact I found was that, parish councils, there are 151 within the Nottinghamshire County Council.

So that is a lot of services and ideas and provision for the people that live in that area.

A quick check for understanding then.

An area which has a county council and a local town council is an example of tier local government system.

I'll give you a few seconds to think about it.

Okay, are you ready to tell me the answer or somebody else around you? It is an example of a two tier local government system.

Exactly right.

And why? Because there are two tiers of local government, aren't there? There's a county council and there's a local town council as well.

So therefore it's two tiers, sharing those responsibilities to local residents.

Well done.

So we just talked a little bit about Warsop.

So like Warsop, lots of areas have also got an additional kind of council called a parish council.

Now parish councils, their responsibilities, they kind of overlap with other local councils.

And what parish councils do is they tend to enhance what the city or the council or the unitary authority are already doing.

So they try to make things in a very small local area even better.

And it does tend to be things like parks or community buildings, local events maybe, Christmas events or summer events, things like play areas and footpaths as well.

So a quick check then.

What type of area do parish councils focus upon? Is it large towns and cities? Is it multiple counties across the country? Or is it villages and smaller areas of a town? Now, think about it.

Okay, so which type of area do parish councils focus upon? It is C, villages and smaller areas of a town.

So task B then.

Your job is to fill the gaps in this diagram of the local government systems. I've given you a word bank to help you out.

So there we've got parish, county, metropolitan, single tier, two tier and unitary.

All right, and there's the chart.

We've been looking at that diagram, haven't we? We've been looking at that image of that local government system.

And you are going to put the words into the correct spaces on that diagram.

It'd be a really good idea now to pause the video to give yourself the time to do that and then we'll go through the answers together.

Okay, let's go through these answers then.

Are you ready? Here they are.

So number one is a metropolitan borough council.

Two there is a single tier.

Number three is a unitary authority.

So that's one council providing all of the services.

Number four down there reads parish council, remember responsibility for just those very small areas of a town or villages.

Number five is county councils.

So a larger part of the two tier system covering the bigger area.

And then number six is two tier.

If you've got all of those correct, well done, that's a really great job.

Time to move on to our third learning cycle, which is how are local councils funded? So all these services that are provided by local councils, a lot of that depends on how much money they have to be able to provide those services.

And the amount of money that a council has coming in is called an income.

So money coming in is income.

Easy, right? Yeah, income.

Now each year, local councils, they have to set a budget so they have to know how much money is coming in so they know how much money they have to be able to spend on services and when they're spending money, the word for that is expenditure.

So expenditure to spend the money.

So the money coming in is income and expenditure is what they are spending.

Now if residents in a town want something in particular, so say they've really need to have big investment, lots of money being spent on open spaces and outside spaces that families and people can spend together, then that means more money is going to have to be spent there than somewhere else.

But if there isn't enough money to spend on everything, that means other areas might not have so much money being spent on it.

Now, true or false, income is the money the council spends.

Give you a seconds to think.

Is that true or false? It is false, isn't it? Because the money that comes in is the income and the money that is spent, they spend is the expenditure.

Okay, so income's the one that comes in, expenditure is what goes out.

Where local councils get their funding from is varied, it comes from lots of different places.

Now central government, they do allocate some money to local governments and then most of the funding that a local government will get, those come from central government.

And that depends on how many people you've got living in an area, what needs the area has and the size of the area as well.

But this money isn't enough on its own.

So central government funding is nowhere near enough to cover all of the services that a local government has to provide.

So the local council has to make money in other ways as well.

Now there's something called council tax.

So every single year, each household within that local area has to pay a fee to the council for living in that area and that money goes towards the local council to spend money on services.

Now your council tax depends on the size of your house and actually how many adults are living there.

So children, you don't pay council tax on children, you do as adults.

Local councils, they set their own rates for council tax.

So how much I pay where I live might be very different from, so how much somebody pays in a London borough or how somebody spends in Blackpool for example.

There are other ways that councils can get money in as well to get more income.

And Andeep here he says, "My family pays money to the council when we park in town.

We also pay to go swimming at the leisure centre." So the council can offer services to people that they will pay for and that helps raise the money for them to spend on other services.

Laura says, "My auntie pays a business tax to the council because she has an office in the centre of town." So that's a different kind of tax, isn't it? We have council tax, which residents pay people who live in the houses, but if you have a business you will pay tax to the council for having your business in that town or that city.

So a quick check for understanding then.

Council tax is? The money business is paid to the council, the charge to park your car on council land or is it money paid to the council from each household? So that's asking about council tax.

I'll give you a few seconds and then come back.

All right, so council tax is C, it's the money paid to the council from each household.

So the money businesses pay is called business tax and the charge to park your car is just car parking fee, isn't it? Now this image here shows an example of what a local council's income could be.

So we've got there in blue, the biggest chunk there, and that's showing 1,171 million pounds comes from central government grants, okay? And then we've got fees and charges in orange.

So that will be things that residents are paying for that they're then getting income back from.

We've got rents.

So the council will own lots of homes and then people will pay to live in those homes and that money goes to the council.

With council tax, so that's the people who live in the area paying the fee to live there.

Business rates, so businesses paying their fee and then other things as well.

So that could be all manner of different ways that the council gets money in.

It might be renting out some of their buildings and allowing other people to use them.

So yeah, lots of different things.

Now if you have a look at that then from which area is the largest income for our example council expected to come? Is it from government grants? Is it from rents? Is it from fees and charges? Or is it from tax? If you want to go back to the previous screen, you can have a look at that.

I'll wait for you.

So the largest income for our example council comes from government grants.

Yeah, so central government allocates, it gives money to local governments and that's the biggest share from our example council.

The amount of this example council was 1,171 million pounds in government grants and yet that's still not enough money to cover all the services a local council has to provide for its residents.

How a council decides to spend its income depends on so many things.

For example, the needs of the area also depends on what central government says it must spend it on.

So social care is a huge, huge amount of expenditure for local councils because they have to provide services for older people or people with disability needs, they have to provide them with help and that is a large amount of money allocated just to one area.

Things like plans for the future, what are they wanting to do in that local area? How are they wanting to improve things not just now in 15 years for example.

As population size, so how many people you've got living in the area.

So the opinions of residents, it's really important, isn't it? Because if you're living there, you understand a lot of the time what your area needs.

And so local councils really try hard to listen to the people and ask what they want.

But that's not just as easy as it sounds because you could have this big wishlist of things you want the town to be or the city to be and you really like to have amazing play areas and you really want to have fantastic leisure centres and we want to have cycle lanes and all this really wonderful stuff, but there just isn't enough money to go around for that.

And so it can be really complicated.

Sometimes if laws change, councils will have to spend certain money on certain things because now they have to buy law.

Maybe their income is lower than expected, maybe people aren't parking in the car parks, maybe people aren't using the leisure services as much, which means that the services are not making the money, they haven't got as much income as they thought they might do.

There might be local emergencies or unexpected costs.

So if you live in a flooding area, if an area floods, the local council will be the people to help with that flooding.

Competing needs, so if lots of things need attention, how do you prioritise that? How do you know where to start? And also, people's opinions are different, aren't they? So you could have one side of the town that really wants one thing and the other side of the town that wants something different.

And that's really hard for councils to to balance that up and know where do we spend this money.

So a quick check then.

Central government gets a say in how local councils spend their money.

Is that true or false? Come back to me in five seconds.

Is it true or false? It is true, yes they do.

They can set legal requirements and say to councils, you must spend some of your money on this.

For example, they have to spend money on social care and public transport.

It's an absolute must for them to do that.

Now as we've said, local councils only get a certain amount of money.

It's not an everlasting pot of money that they can spend things on.

Andeep says, "If a flood happens, local councils support residents and businesses with money and shelter.

They fix the damage and work hard to support people affected." But then John is saying, "But how do they afford this?" Well, they've got to take money from another area that the council will going to spend money on and then spend it on the emergency.

Now there's certain things called essential services and you cannot cut these services unless there is absolutely no other option.

And essential services are essential because they are absolutely at the centre of wellbeing and safety for the people who live there.

And if you take away those essential services, you might actually be causing harm to the people who live there.

And as well as this, as we've said, central government has got rules about what certain things local councils have to offer.

Even if they've got emergency costs.

Another quick check then.

So some services are essential because they are crucial for the wellbeing and, of the community.

Well, let's check it then.

They're crucial for the wellbeing and safety of the community, absolutely.

And as we've said, if you remove that essential service, you might actually be causing harm to the community by taking that away, even if it's for emergency purposes.

Some examples of essential services are public health services.

For example, food inspection teams, so making sure that places are clean.

If you don't check some of the restaurants, if one of them isn't keeping things clean and they're feeding hundreds of people a week, you might have an outbreak of some really awful diseases from that.

So it's really important that that doesn't get cut.

Emergency services, local councils are the one who fund the emergency services in the area and you just cannot take that service away from people.

And things like water and sewage, you have to keep the sewage moving.

Sewage is everything that goes down your toilet, all right? You don't want to be cut in the services for that.

That would not end well in the local area, would it? It's really important as well to keep people healthy and well.

That waste is taken away from where people live.

So when councils have got unexpected costs, it's not the essential services cut, but the non-essential services.

Non-essential services are things like community events.

So do you remember Laura was talking about her seaside day? That might have to go.

Non-urgent repairs of roads or buildings.

If you've got a pothole in the road, it's probably gonna damage a few tyres, but we don't really have the money to fix it so we're just going to have to ignore that for now.

Leisure services, maybe some of the things that people like to do for sport, the funding for that will have to be cut in order to pay for the emergency or unexpected costs.

Things like arts or culture events, libraries might close or theatres or museums. This is all a massive shame because often it's the non-essential services that make people's lives better.

It's the things that they enjoy the most and it's often the things that bring the community together as well.

So John here, he says, "My local swimming pool closed down because the council couldn't afford to maintain it.

I was really disappointed." I can understand that unless you have your own swimming pool, council services might be the only way that you can access things like swimming pools or tennis courts or gyms. Of course, there's things like private gyms that you could go to and private swimming pools often they've got a much, much higher cost and people often can't afford to to do that, to access that.

So council services are there for everybody and are usually priced that most people will be able to afford it.

If you take that away, that limits those opportunities for people in that local area.

And this makes it a massive challenge for local councils.

They have to spend money on certain things and if they don't have enough income, if they don't have enough money to spend on things, other areas have to have their funding cut.

And this can make residents really, really angry about when cuts happen because it's the things that they enjoy often get cut first.

So a short task for you now then, are these services listed here considered essential or non-essential? So you have to put them into the correct place on the chart.

We've got emergency services, museums, community events, sewage disposal, public health and parks.

Pause the video if you need to take the time and I'll meet you back here.

Let's check those answers then.

Here we go.

So the essential services there are public health, sewage disposal and emergency services.

And the non-essential services are parks, museums, and community events.

Really good job.

Well done.

So your final task of this lesson then part one is to use this pie chart to explain where local councils get their income from and what the two largest sources of funding from this council, what they are.

Pause the video here to give yourself the time to do that and then we'll go through the answers together.

Let's take a look at it then.

So your answer might have included that local councils get their income from different places.

Central government gives them funding depending how many people live in the area and what the needs of the area are.

Councils charge taxes to homes and businesses.

They also charge to use their services like parking and leisure centres.

Part B of that, which is what are the two largest sources of funding? It says here that the example local council's largest sources of funding come from central government and council tax.

Did your answer sound something like that? Remember, it might not be written exactly the same as that.

If you've got some of those key points about where the councils get their income from and how they make that funding, really well done.

Great job.

Part two of your final task then is I want you to imagine that your local council has an income of 100,000 pounds.

Now that is really, really low compared to what councils really do work with, but for the purposes of this task, it's 100,000 pounds.

So with a partner, if you have one, you need to decide on the budget.

So that's what you are going to spend that money on.

Now there are a couple of rules, so listen carefully.

The first one is you must provide all essential services, no cuts, no, all essential services.

For non-essential services, you've got to choose which services to fund and how much money that you would allocate to each of them.

All right, so that's your choice.

Now, pause for the non-essential services and the essential services, you'll see those on the next slide, okay? Now what's really important is you need to be able to explain your choices.

And to do that, you might want to think about why you chose certain services over others.

You might want to give a reason as to why your choices might impact your community.

Is it gonna impact them positively? Is it gonna impact them negatively? And you might wanna discuss about what challenges you faced when making your decision.

Since we've talked about councils do have huge challenges, they have a lot of difficult decisions to make about funding and this is gonna be your chance to experience that just a little bit here.

All right, so there you've got five different things there.

You've got emergency services, public health, water and sewage, road maintenance and waste management.

They're the essential services.

And the non-essential ones are theatres and museums, parks and open spaces, leisure centres, youth club and older people's transport.

And then the costs to fund those are down the side.

Now, the essential services, remember you have to fund those.

And then the non-essential services, it says what would be the cost to fully fund them? All right, so you don't have to spend all of that on it.

You can choose how much of that money you want to give to that non-essential service.

But remember, your income is only 100,000 pounds.

Good luck with your budget.

Pause the video now and I'll meet you back here soon.

How did you find that? It's pretty hard, isn't it really, because you can't have everything that you want to have and that does have an impact on the people that live there.

So let's see.

So here's an example of how you could have spent your budget.

So remember you had to fully fund the essential services there, so all of that had to go.

And then on the non-essential services, those numbers in the non-essential cost, none of them are fully funded.

So let's see what impact that might have then.

So your answer might have been something like this.

I decided that it was important to allocate money to each of the non-essential costs so that none of these were fully cut.

That's a good point, isn't it? I started by allocating each service 50% of their total costs, so half of what it was.

And then I split up any funding left over between parts, youth clubs and elderly transport as I felt like these had the highest priority.

By making sure all areas receive some funding, it means nobody in the community fully misses out, although it will mean that services are not running at full capacity.

In an ideal world, all services would be fully funded, but this wasn't possible with the available budget.

So I tried to make decisions as fairly as possible to suit all citizens.

Well done 'cause that is a tricky task and it gives you some experience of the difficult decisions that councils have to make every single day across the whole of the UK.

Great job.

Let's finish with a summary then, shall we, of our lesson called "What do Local Councils Do?" They do a lot, don't they? So local governments, they focus on managing services and policies that directly affect their local communities.

So it is not UK wide, it's about the local communities.

In some areas of the country, there is one tier of local government providing all the local services and other areas have two tiers of local government.

Local councils are responsible for managing a wide range of services directly of the communities.

For example, libraries, housing, and youth services.

Local councils get their income from central governments, taxes and business and houses, as well as charging for use of their facilities like leisure centres and car parks.

But local councils often have to make some really difficult financial money decisions because they only have a certain amount of income.

I think you have done a brilliant job with learning today because again, it's had some really complicated things to understand and you've worked your way through it and I'm really, really proud of you, well done.

Hopefully, see you next time.