Fund our local councils properly after Covid-19

AT some point in the future, we will be able to look back on what’s happening at the moment and realise it’s finally over.

It’s hard to imagine what has to happen between now and then, but it’s quite likely - perhaps even guaranteed - that we’ll be in a recession, with a Government which needs to find funding to repay the money being used to support all the schemes which are keeping the economy upright at the moment.

There will be many lessons to learn from what’s going on at that moment. One this column would like to add to the list: The importance of properlyfunded local councils.

In the past few weeks, the government has had to find £1.6bn to help support local councils which find themselves on the frontline of the fightback against Coronavirus.

Rossendale Council, for example, has not only had to continue providing regular services, it’s had to do so while many regular income streams have dried up.

After a decade of budget cuts from central government, councils like Rossendale went into Coronavirus with very little in reserve to provide extra services.

The council has become the centre of a network to help make sure the vulnerable and isolated get the support they need.

It’s continued emptying the bins, keeping the streets clean and doing everything we expect of it in return for our council tax.

The decade of budget cuts - which have been supported in the budget each and every year by our local MP Jake Berry - have been fiercely opposed by local councillors in Rossendale.

At Lancashire County Council, which shares the same political colours as the Government, criticism of the swathe after swathe of budget cuts has been muted, if not non-existent, from the council’s leadership in recent years, despite the devastating impact those savings have had on services.

Those budget cuts have been coupled with councils being encouraged to find money from elsewhere.

The lure of low-interest public works loans to invest in things which will drive income in the future has been alluring to many.

But such schemes only work if the reward outweighs the risk.

Take the Spinning Point development. Had the second phase - be it shops, a spa, flats, a hotel or whatever the council would have finally settled on - it would have provided a valuable source of income to the council from rents. After having its budgets slashed by more than half - we’re talking losing millions of pounds a year here - such a plan would have been massively appealing.

But perhaps the best decision Rossendale Council has taken in the last decade has been to shelve that scheme, just weeks before the pandemic hit.

Had it gone ahead, and saddled itself with more loans, it could well have ended up with a remarkable white elephant of a project, with lots of management and running costs, plus loan repayments, but very little income to offset it.

To make matters worse, current government plans see it essentially ending government grants to councils annually in exchange for a greater share of business rates - a source of income which presumably will be massively diminished in the weeks and months ahead.

Surely recent weeks have taught us as a society that we need decentlyfunded public services locally.

Not by whacking up council taxes, but by giving local councils the share of the overall tax income they deserve, not the spare change available after things like HS2 have had billions of pounds pumped into them.