Dwindling money makes elections the most important for decades
IN May, a once in four year event takes place. We get to vote for our local county councillors.
For many people, the county council is a remote organisation which delivers services from afar and doesn’t have the best track record of paying attention to areas like Rossendale.
In the time I’ve lived in Rossendale, I’ve never had anything through my door from a county councillor, and very little from the county council.
Until recently, it was quite easy to forget it existed.
It doesn’t collect our council tax – Rossendale Council does, and then passes it on – and little changed in the way it delivered services.
Over the last 18 months, the cuts from government have really begun to bite. Libraries closed, museums closed, and the prospect of bus services being cut too.
In some cases, local organisations have stepped forward to provide services instead. In other cases, we wait to hear news.
How are the discussions going over re-opening Helmshore Textile Museum, for example?
We’ve heard very little from the County Council.
I know it’s tempting for many people not to bother voting in local elections.
After all, in many wards, we get precious little information between elections, and that’s doubly true for the county council, where elections only take place once every four years.
But this year’s election is special, for all the wrong reasons.
Whoever we elect to the county council will be taking responsibility for either running or scrutinising an authority which can no longer afford to pay for itself.
It’s well known that Lancashire County Council is running short on cash. Its funding from the government has been hammered in recent years.
The fact that budget cuts have happened annually from 2010 until now, but we’ve only really felt the pinch on services locally in the last 18 months, is testament to the fact that the council could be more efficient.
But LCC has once again repeated its warning that it will soon not have enough money to even provide the services it is obliged to by law.
That’s things like adult social care for example.
Essentially, through budget cuts from government, LCC has been forced to use up all of its savings – not in itself a bad thing if done carefully – and pushed into what in the private sector would be bankruptcy.
If that were to happen, the government would essentially have to run the services and repair things.
Maybe that needs to happen somewhere for ministers to realise the damage they are inflicting on local government, although I suspect there is no shortage of MPs stepping forward to explain that – if they care enough to listen.
So this election matters. Because whoever wins, has to try and save our local services.
And they need to tell us how they would set about doing that.
Too often, the politics of the county council is a local version of the national debate. Labour overspending! Tory cuts! Lib Dems third way! But surely it’s more important than that.
Whoever wins the election will either be involved in handing the keys of the county council across to government when the money runs out, or responsible for coming up with a plan to ensure that doesn’t happen.
We deserve to know what those plans are before we cast our votes.
We have a duty to vote and have our say.
Locally, these elections are possibly the most important in decades.