Local authorities chosen to pioneer community-based budgets have welcomed the chancellor’s announcement this week that they are to launch from next April 2011.

The so-called prototypes, announced in the Spending Review, will look at ways local authorities and partners can pool budgets and develop more joined-up services, and will build on the work of the 13 Total Place pilots completed earlier this year.

The CLG said: ‘Pooled departmental budgets will help councils and their partners to work together to support families with complex needs. All places may be able to operate these approaches from 2013/14.’

Of the 16 Birmingham, Bradford, Croydon, Kent, Leicestershire, Lewisham, and Manchester were previous Total Place pilots.

Lincolnshire CC chief executive, Tony McArdle, said: ‘This is a challenge for us as much as it is for central government. It has a huge amount of potential. Get it right, and it should alleviate the pain of the cuts over the next few years.’

However, he added that central government would need to invest the energy and commitment into community-based budgets that councils and their partners had put in, if it is going to work.

John Sinnott, chief executive of Leicestershire CC, said: ‘The pooling of budgets is the key to implementing the conclusions of all the “place-based” work which has been undertaken. It is very encouraging to see that is recognised in the Spending Review.’

Cllr Daniel Astaire, Westminster City Council’s cabinet member for society, said: ‘Being freed from the shackles of Whitehall will help empower us to tackle the social, economic and political challenges that the next five years will bring.

‘It will also particularly benefit our ground-breaking family recovery programme which, in the last year, has saved local taxpayers £2m following falls in anti-social behaviour, domestic violence, poor parenting and truancy.’