I read the recent article by Stephanie Flanders on whether people have noticed the cuts to council services with a sense of calm ‘before the storm’. As the leader of a local authority faced with cuts much higher than the national average I constantly worry about the effect of austerity on our residents and what their response will be.
The answer to Flanders’ question, ‘Have they noticed?’ is even more complex than she suggests.
To begin with, the scale of cuts varies hugely depending on where you live in the country. The government has been astute in distributing the pain largely to more deprived places such as east London and the north – this is largely Labour territory. Shouts of pain and unfairness here go unheard. The government is driven by the idealology of the small state; consequently, we are seeing a sense of ‘fatalism’ overcome these places as we as local politicians strive to minimise the damage.
Places such as the home counties, where the cuts may grab ministerial attention, are in a far less serious situation. Savings to be made, yes, and some difficult decisions, yes, but nothing like the scale faced in our former northern industrial towns and cities.
Consequently, the London-centred media pay little attention. More worryingly, Labour in opposition seems muted on the issue as it struggles to convince the electorate on economic competence.
The government has also been extremely effective in deflecting attention. Only last week a national debate raged on council income from car parking. This red herring covered up an additional £800m cut to revenue support grant smuggled through technical papers in August, extra cuts which did not form part of the recent settlement announcement. Again, grant-dependant councils, which are largely in the north and in east London, will bear the brunt in 2015-16 and, yes, no one’s noticed – at least not yet.
As a council we have tried to minimise the impact on frontline services that affect the majority of our residents, such as environmental and highways works, as these are consistently the top priorities identified through various consultations. What this has meant is that we continue to reduce our ‘core’ services that keep us safe and legal and focus service reductions on areas that, as the article says, will impact on specific individuals rather than the general population. So numerous libraries, sports centres, swimming pools and youth clubs have all been reduced. This is still not a palatable solution when an individual cannot get services previously supplied.
I do, however, believe that this does not truly reflect what is to come. The cuts needed to be made by local authorities in 2013-14 have yet to be fully felt, although the need to reduce council tax and housing benefit (bedroom tax) which impact on the income of councils has received national coverage with a significant public protest – a sign of things to come, perhaps?
Research from SIGOMA – the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities – has identified the current inequalities around the cuts and has made projections that show a widening of disparities across authorities that will inevitable result is a significant variation in service provision, and the latest cut will make the position even worse.
So, while there may not be too much general noise at present, I do worry about the years to come.
A postcode lottery, where the poorest and more needy will suffer as services will rely on the ability of a local authority to generate business rates, something that we all know will not be equal either.
The right wing of the Conservative party may say keep cutting till they start screaming, but what kind of nation does that make us, when many voices will always find it difficult to be heard?
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Steve Houghton is leader of Barnsley council
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I realise that many areas of the country that have always received greater funds have had greater reductions in grant. However, it seems fair to me that those areas of the country with an older population should receive greater help and my understanding is that is what has happened. So whilst I accept that deprivation is important so too are the elderly regardless of where they live and generally some areas in the South of England have more elderly people.
I do not think any government can get budget allocation right. Each year we hear moans from Police regarding central funding. We now have it from Councils. Everyone has the right to offer help on determining formulae to achieve fairness. No doubt the writer will be doing this.
Allocation of government grant to local authorities is important because unlike council tax it comes from taxation which is – generally – progressive in the way it operates; and indeed in many areas council tax provides a lesser proportion of revenue than government grant. The government grant is – or should be – allocated according to the Barnett formula which, for all its age, still has basic soundness. The formula takes account of the number/proportion of elderly people, but a good many other factors such as the extent of the roads to be maintained and the amount of streets to be swept and so on. However there is a key point to note here. To the extent that every local authority gets government grant, the allocation is not sufficiently distinguishing between the authorities in greater need and the rest. I would therefore advocate a formula that disregarded the elements common to all authorities and only aided in respect of the variations form the norm, e.g. the authority with many miles of country roads or with a huge number of elderly. As an example of this principle, many years ago when trying to devise the formula for allocating grant to schools in my local authority area, 93% of which had to be delegated, and a high proportion of that on a per capita basis, it seemed to be obvious that to the extent that every school had a % on free school meals, a minimum of say 4% of the roll, that element could be funded from the per capita element leaving only those schools with more than say 4% should be given differentiated grant. The same should apply to the proportion with special education needs etc.
Now when it comes to cuts in government grant, it should be the common-to-all element that gets cut – personally, I oppose such cuts in any event though that is a different argument to be had – rather than the differentiated element. If this had been done, the squealing would uniform across the country rather than from the hardest-up authorities in the country.
Not to worry Barnsley Council rationalised Schools and the emergency services with South Yorkshire and are now doing what Margaret Thatcher wanted to do build houses on School fields to raise a little cash.