TELE POSTBAG
‘UK GOVERNMENT IS TO BLAME FOR COUNCIL CUTS’
THERE has been much discussion locally and in the Tele about the proposed real terms cuts in services in Inverclyde which will have a significant impact on many in our community.
As councillors we take these decisions and responsibilities very seriously and are working to mitigate these impacts.
These savings are not by any means driven by ideology, at least in Inverclyde and Scotland.
Ignoring the £11.3 million of grant funding from the SNP Scottish Government (SG) for education, Inverclyde received £185.3m in 2022/2023 from the SG through the General Revenue Grant and Business Rates, which is equivalent to £2,400 per person against the Scottish average of £2,000 per person in the budget for 2022/23. This funding equates to 85 per cent of Inverclyde Council external income with the rest (£33m) coming from council tax.
Going forward, council officers are forecasting a budget deficit in excess of £15.2m due to inflationary pressures over the next two financial years up to April 2025. In order to balance the budget, which we are legally required to do, we either have to cut services, increase council tax or get increased funding through the SG. The SG gets in effect all its funds from the Barnett Formula which is based of UK Government spending in England. UK Governments (mainly Conservative Governments over the last 50 years) have made real terms cuts to local government spending which means there is less funding available in the block grant to Scotland.
As means of example, the UK Government funding of local government, fire and police in England is £73.7 billion in 2022/23 which equates to £1,300 per person whilst the equivalent amount in Scotland is £13.5bn or £2450 per person. So, despite successive reductions in local authority spending in England, the Scottish Government has been able to provide, and protect the provision of, higher local government spending in Scotland, until now.
This is on top of spending £610m per year to mitigate UK Government welfare decisions.
The cost-of-living emergency and the inflationary pressures over the next two years means a dramatic increase in spending is needed in local government to avoid cuts.
This is the crux; Inverclyde and Scotland are reliant on trickle down funding from UK spending decisions, and without additional spending in England, there is no additional funding for Scotland and Inverclyde. But rather than address this issue, the UK Government has instead been injecting chaos into the markets, increasing the crisis and ‘changing the captain on the Titanic’.
At times of stress, you can see if a system works.
In this case it has shown that the UK is broken. We need to change the system to get decisions on what we can spend made in Scotland and Inverclyde rather than tying our future to UK governments.
To continue the Titanic analogy, we need to start looking for the lifeboat, rather than waiting for someone to plug the hole in the ship.