As the leader of a council that has seen its budget cut by 56 per cent since 2010, it was astonishing to see the prime minister criticising his own Conservative council in Oxfordshire for making cuts to services. David Cameron genuinely seems to believe his own propaganda that it is possible to deliver an unprecedented squeeze on council budgets without having any impact on frontline services. Such comments are dangerously naïve and an insult to councils across the country that are working to protect our residents from the impact of his government’s policies.
In Lambeth, we have made significant savings, through actions such as reducing the number of council buildings, negotiating better contracts for services and working in partnership with other local authorities on certain services. We have also increased council tax by the maximum we are able to under government policy to provide much-needed funds. But the scale of the cuts has forced us to lose 1,000 members of staff since 2010 and to make real cuts to services such as parks, libraries and street cleaning. The re-election of this government means even deeper austerity and David Cameron clearly does not understand or simply does not care that it is impossible to maintain the same services with massively reduced funding.
We spend over half of our budget on providing social care for the most vulnerable adults and children in the borough. That means unavoidable cuts to other services so we can protect those who most rely on us. I agree with Cameron that local government services such as parks, children’s centres and libraries should be protected. But he has imposed a financial settlement that means councils like Lambeth will struggle to deliver our statutory services like child protection and social care should this persist, never mind those other important services.
While Cameron may claim that these cuts are necessary, that does not explain the fact that inner-city councils like Lambeth have lost almost three times as much per head as councils like Oxfordshire, despite us having much higher levels of need. It is also ignores the absence of any joined-up plan for local government beyond austerity. George Osborne may talk a good game on devolution but we have been left with restricted powers to raise council tax to protect services and a proposal to allow councils to keep business rates but only if we forgo the power to raise them. Similarly, in recent months, central government has cut social rents (and therefore our long-planned budgets) by one per cent, proposed to scrap the affordable housing requirements we can demand from developers and introduced a new public health formula that redistributes money from poorer councils to wealthier ones. We know that we can deliver many services better than central government – we have already shown this with the success of our programme to get people back into work for example. But we cannot do it with both hands tied behind our back and need a government willing to devolve real powers and budgets to local levels.
What we have instead is a prime minister without any idea of the actual impact of his policies at a local level. I have written to him accepting his offer to meet with his policy advisers to hear their miraculous ideas for delivering better public services without funding. But if he is struggling to understand what is happening in his own constituency, I would suggest he leaves Whitehall and takes a short walk across the river to Lambeth to see the real impact of his government’s policies on our residents.
———————————-
Lib Peck is leader of Lambeth council. She tweets @CllrPeck
———————————-