Council cuts have been grim - but you ain’t seen nothing yet
A VERY grim picture has been painted of the finances of Lancashire County Council. Independent auditors say its finances are at a tipping point.
In other words, if you think the cuts so far have been bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The authority has relied heavily on its reserves - essentially its savings - to fill some of the evergrowing gap between the money it used to receive from government, and what it receives now.
Elsewhere in the country, large county authorities are pretty much on the point of going bust.
Northamptonshire County Council has had to put up an emergency budget which means it will only provide the services it is legally obliged to.
That means things like some adult social care, some children’s social services, some road repairs and some sort of library service.
But many of the things we take for granted councils aren’t legally required to fund.
To draw a parallel between Lancashire and Northamptonshire is a little unfair at first glance, because Northamptonshire has been criticised for poor spending control, and indeed, overspending even this year. The same cannot be said for Lancashire, but the fact auditors are warning that soon the authority won’t be able to call on its savings to maintain services should alarm us all. The auditors say they reserve the right to issue formal recommendations during the year if finance plans don’t become clearer.
The county council needs so save £135m over the next four years, of which £81m has been identified. Sometimes it baffles me how the county council is still operating, given its budgets have more than halved since 2010.
Tory advocates of such savage cuts say it proves that councils like Lancashire were bloated and inefficient.
I suspect the truth is more about staff working ever harder to try and maintain services, and a dollop of pure good luck that something hasn’t gone wrong. And let’s not forget there have been a lot of cuts. Some are small in value, such as axing funding for police community support officers employed to deal with crime on public transport, or doubling the amount disabled people must pay to get the bus before 9.30am to £1, but they add up. And they all impact people.
Lancashire’s financial predicament perhaps tells us what many have thought for a while: The county council is too big, and too remote, to deliver cost-efficient local public services in an area like Lancashire. In Northamptonshire, a government review has suggested the county council be scrapped and replaced with unitary authorities - smaller authorities which combine the responsibilities of borough and county councils.
It’s what Blackburn with Darwen has, as does Bury, Rochdale and the other Greater Manchester councils. It doesn’t mean the spending pressures are off by any stretch, but it does surely remove ridiculous duplication of effort by local authorities, which in turn costs money.
Rawtenstall’s new bus station is being funded in part by Lancashire County Council, but managed by Rossendale Council, which needs bus companies paying to use the bus station to make it work. LCC provides many subsidies to keep Rossendale’s bus services going.
If LCC cuts bus subsidies, that’ll reduce the money the borough council gets from buses using the bus station, which in turn jeopardises the future of a building the county council helped build. Then there’s the bins. Lancashire County council runs the tips but Rossendale collected rubbish from your door.
When Rossendale lost a subsidy for recycling from the county council, it started charging to pick up garden rubbish.
The alternative is to drive the garden waste to the local tip.
So LCC saves with one hand, but ends up spending with the other, and Rossendale has to funding the administration of a garden waste collection scheme in the process.
Is there a cheaper way of doing this?
Of course - but it involves turkeys voting for Christmas at County Hall.
Which might be why the County Hall turkeys are so quiet when it comes to demanding more money from Government at the moment.
Their silence when it comes to the challenges ahead is deafening - and is letting all of us down.