Ministers should stop experimenting with watered-down forms of the Total Place agenda and quickly transfer control over budgets for a wide range of local public services from Whitehall to town halls, an influential group of councils has reported.

The City Finance Commission (CFC) – led by the city councils of Birmingham, Manchester and Westminster – published a report into local government finance on 24 May.

The study makes three core recommendations in advance of communities secretary Eric Pickles’ Local Government Resource Review (LGRR), due later this summer.

Two recommendations – an increasingly-localised business rates system and the introduction of tax increment finance (TIF)-style programmes to fund regeneration projects – are under consideration at the DCLG, and are likely to be implemented by Mr Pickles.

But the commission’s insistence the coalition should expedite and widen experiments with merged and devolved public sector funding pots – dubbed Total Place under Labour, and ‘community budgets’ under the coalition – goes beyond what ministers are currently piloting, and challenges Whitehall’s current appetite for devolution.

The report states that ‘too many Whitehall departments are not playing ball with the coalition’s localism agenda’, and warns ‘this needs to change’.

Ministers are monitoring 16 community budget pilot projects with a limited focus on merged cash pots for tackling problem families.

In contrast, the CFC study urges ministers to devolve merged funding streams for a vast array of public services – and to hand responsibility for prioritising the use of the cash to local experts.

‘The Government should trial the transfer to cities of Whitehall budgets and give local authorities the key role in commissioning integrated local services,’ the study states.

‘A “single pot” could deliver better, more responsive, integrated local services in areas such as employment and skills, adult education, health and housing.’

The report exposes the disjointed, often confusing, network of public funding streams for local services. Total expenditure in Manchester, for example, is £22bn annually – but the cash is channelled through more than 30 central, local or regional bodies.

Co-ordinating spending through a single, local commissioner of services would be ‘more efficient, less duplicative and less fragmented’ – and could boost local economic growth, the study argues.

Tony Travers, local government expert at the London School of Economics and a CFC commissioner, told The MJ: ‘The purpose of this recommendation was to challenge the Government to go further… to suggest a far more radical decentralisation of powers and cash pots than has been entertained so far.’

A DCLG spokesman said ministers were considering key CFC recommendations. But the department was concerned sufficient frameworks for local business growth were not yet in place.

‘The Government wants every community to be open for business and rewarded for economic growth, but at the moment, there is no motivation for councils to support local firms or create new jobs,’ the spokesman said.

‘The LGRR is looking at proposals to introduce genuine incentives for local economic growth.’