The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) says it hopes councils do not miss out in the upcoming Federal Budget, despite the strains keeping spending low.

With the Federal Budget announcement now less than a week away, ALGA President Mayor Troy Pickard says it will be delivered by “a Government promising tight fiscal management and facing strong pressure to act to ensure the economy stays buoyant”.

With slow economic growth and high unemployment across many areas in Australia, ALGA has called for a strong investment in community infrastructure in its submission to the federal budget and says it will continue this throughout the 2016 federal election campaign.

Specifically, ALGA wants a regional and community infrastructure fund of $300 million per annum for the next four years to address the growing infrastructure backlog, and to stimulate growth over the longer term.

“As part of the stimulus response to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, the Federal Government heeded ALGA's calls for significant spending in community infrastructure and established the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program,” Mayor Pickard said.

He says that program saw $1 billion invested in council community infrastructure projects from 2008-09 over 3,000 projects across Australia in total.

The program aimed to renew local community infrastructure with projects ranging from visitor information centres to playgrounds, bikeways, swimming pools, laneways and footbridges.

“The program demonstrated that local infrastructure is an important area of national investment and that the councils are both pragmatic and quick to move in delivering these renewal projects for their communities,” Pickard said.

A 2006 PwC Report into local government financial sustainability found that many councils - particularly in regional, rural and remote areas - do not have the resources to fund critical local infrastructure improvements without assistance from the Federal Government.

The PwC report estimated that there was an infrastructure backlog totalling $14.5 billion in local government, and that an extra $2.2 billion per annum in infrastructure spending was required to bridge the gap and maintain local infrastructure.

To update these figures and underpin the call for a community infrastructure funding program, ALGA has commissioned Jeff Roorda and Associates to prepare the National State of the Assets (NSoA) Community Infrastructure Report.

“Councils have been asked to contribute to this process by providing data on their community infrastructure and I ask all councils to respond to this call so that we can strengthen the case for further Commonwealth investment in this vital area,” Mayor Pickard said.