IT is rare for local government finance to dominate the national news agenda but the growing crisis at many authorities, including Hampshire, has forced it into the spotlight.

Many councils are teetering on the edge of financial collapse caught between rising costs and insufficient funding.

The cost burden is being driven by the mounting expense of paying for adult social care and school transport, especially children with special educational needs who usually do not go to the school just down the road. The problem is that councils are increasingly unable to meet these costs, hence the proposals to axe services such as museums and recycling centres.

The vast majority of money for local authorities comes not from council tax, parking charges or business rates but from grants from central Government. 

Simply put, these have been squeezed by Governments since 2010 and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

On the good news front, Winchester City Council has dodged this bullet, largely because the services mentioned are not its responsibility.

So what needs to be done? 

In an ideal world the Government would properly fund local government but there seems little sign of that, even if there is a change of ruling party after the next general election.

Earlier this month the Chronicle printed an article by Yinnon Ezra, a former senior county council officer, who proposed that Hampshire follow the model of Wiltshire and have a single unitary authority to cover the county outside Southampton and Portsmouth.

There would be massive savings in the backroom functions but at the cost of local government becoming more remote from the people it serves.  Would that be a price worth paying?