Will austerity measures make city worse off?
I think 2022 needs to be a big year. It feels like Nottingham needs some things to go its way Chris Jobson
As the year comes to an end, many of the cuts that the city council has made in 2021 are starting to be felt. With even tougher medicine on the way, BEN COOPER asks whether the council is taking the right action, and where it could leave the city in a few years
ASK the Labour group that runs Nottingham City Council why they’ve had to take a series of farreaching austerity measures this year and they will tell you it’s chiefly because of drastic cuts from a Conservative-led central government.
Ask their Tory opposition – such as it is, with only two councillors – and they will say it’s down to historic financial mismanagement and poor planning at Loxley House, epitomised by the fiasco of Robin Hood Energy.
Either way the council, and the city, has been through some serious belt-tightening this year, the first of at least four lean years ahead.
Last week, head of finance Sam Webster went through yet another prescription of tough medicine to the council’s executive board, which, if all goes to plan, will be passed in March before the 2022/23 financial year begins.
Among the measures, amounting to £12.2 million of savings next year alone, were controversial plans to close six children’s centres in the city and reduce children’s care staffing, scale back Linkbus services and increase Medilink bus fares, as well as introducing charges for second parking permits and bulky waste removal.
And these are just the latest costsaving measures – chiefly cuts – the city is being asked to endure.
Over the past year, since the Recovery and Improvement Plan was unveiled, the council has also cut away salami-style at statutory services, announced the closure of John Carroll Leisure Centre, cut funding for city arts organisations, put various residential development schemes on hold, sold off a number of its real estate assets, and increased council tax by 4.99 percent.
The body language of the Labour councillors gathered at the executive board meeting spoke volumes about how comfortably all this is sitting with them.
Councillor Cheryl Barnard, portfolio holder for children and young people, said that it was a “difficult budget to come to terms with”, that, she admitted, would make “very difficult reading” for the most vulnerable people in Nottingham, those who depend on the council for support.
Even council leader Councillor David Mellen said that it was “unacceptable we are forced to make these decisions this week” – with the emphasis on the word “forced”.
And last week, speaking to the Post, Councillor Mellen admitted that morale had taken a hit among Labour councillors “having to defend decisions that we make collectively which are not good for our community”.
So where does Nottingham stand after nearly a year of local cuts?
Are the communities that councillors came into politics to serve now in a far worse, more precarious position than before? And where does responsibility really lie?
Councillor Webster says that the real root of the localised version of austerity is the far larger national policy that goes back to the beginning of the Conservative-liberal Democrat coalition of 2010.
The net result, he says: 10 years of central government reductions to key pillars of funding for city councils, chiefly the revenue support grant – which for Nottingham has fallen from £103.3 million in 2014/15 to £25.8 million this year – combined with unfair burdens on councils to provide social care – a cost constantly going up.
“The big problem with the policy that the Government persists with,” he says, “is that it’s actually levelling down not levelling up.
“When you consider the most fundamental of all political outcomes, the life expectancy of people in this country, that is now falling for adults in the poorest parts of the country for the first time in 40 years, and this was before the pandemic. “It’s a shocking indictment.” Does Councillor Webster share Councillor Mellen’s anxieties that the council is simply storing up problems for the future?
He says: “I’m a Labour politician, I believe in progressive policies, I believe in investing in public services, I believe in early intervention, I believe in stopping some of the social and economic issues that come out if you under-invest in public services, which is what the Government is doing at the moment.
“You have to make the most informed choices you can. We have to target funding at the most vulnerable.
“We’ll be spending £6.5 million more next year on the most vulnerable children in Nottingham.”
Conservative Councillor Andrew Rule, one of only two Tories on the council, takes another view about the prospects for Nottingham after all the cuts – and where the blame lies.
“For Councillor Webster to sit there and say the Government never gives us anything is a fallacy. We’d all like free money to spend how we like. But we’ve seen what happens when this council is given money to spend how they like – you end up with £38 million going into Robin Hood Energy.
“I would accept the argument about revenue support grant more if they actually acknowledged what they have had from the Government.
“The Government have made available a number of ring-fenced or direct grants for big capital projects such as the £165 million we’ve had for Transforming Cities.”
Professor Oliver Morrissey, specialist in economic development at the University of Nottingham, says that whether Nottingham will end up a considerably poorer place as a result of the cuts it has had to endure depends partly on how the council rolls out its own programme of savings over the next few years.
“Funding to the cities that aren’t in the South East is being reduced,” he says. “They’re in the weakest position to raise revenue from property taxes, and they have higher spending obligations.
“The question is are they making the best of a bad lot? They have to make some cuts, but are they trying to protect core activities. What services do they need to maintain and are they maintaining the ones they can?”
Councillor Webster is adamant that the council is maintaining those services. Councillor Rule says that steps taken now could be sowing unhealthy seeds for the future.
“To the question of whether Nottingham is a poorer place as a result of the cuts, it absolutely is,” he says.
“Everything from the closure of children’s centres to the closure of community centres to the withdrawal of Linkbus services which will be felt by elderly citizens who rely on them to get out and about.
“If you take away the intervention and the play and youth aspects you’re going to frontload that later down the line and add to what’s an existing pressure today.”
Richard Machin, senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University, says that part of the challenge the council’s finance team has now is to mitigate the effects of what he describes as
the “double whammy” of central funding cuts being felt the hardest in the cities with the deepest social problems.
He says: “At a time when you’re under such financial vulnerability that’s when you want to be able to look to your council, but the council itself is making cuts.
“The squeeze that local authorities like Nottingham City Council have had is so centred on social care as a statutory function, but the demands are so high it’s been stretched to breaking points to deliver those statutory services.
“There is that double whammy of the long-term impact of austerity and then those extra demands placed by Covid.”
And then there are aspects of life in Nottingham that aren’t directly linked to the council’s core services, but will be vitally important to its future.
Chris Hobson, Director of Policy and External Affairs at the East Midlands Chamber of Commerce, believes that, with no end to the Broadmarsh saga in sight, more needs to be done to give the whole city centre a boost and bring some business confidence back locally.
“It’s been a tough year for the city, with events cancelled, the disappointing news around the levelling up fund, the general financial difficulties of Robin Hood Energy and big projects like the Castle reopening not being as smooth as they’d have wanted it to be.
“From a private sector point of view there are still amazing businesses around Nottingham city centre, it’s a fantastic population with great communities.
“Nottingham needs to feel confident and it needs to have some wins that it can be excited about,” he says. “I think 2022 needs to be a big year. It feels like Nottingham needs some things to go its way.”
Whatever the historical problems, whether they are of the council’s own doing, or the Government’s, or due to factors outside anyone’s control, Nottingham has certainly seen better days.
The question of whether it’s going to have more good days ahead of it comes down to many things now, which all seem to be poised precariously – the council’s finances, the future of the Broadmarsh, Covid, how well social services can hold up.
Chris Hobson is likely to get his wish: 2022 looks bound to be a major year for Nottingham, as many of these big pieces of the jigsaw come together.
For the sake of the city, let’s hope that the second part of that wish comes true – that more things start going our way in the next year.
EXPERTS BELIEVE 2022 WILL BE CRUCIAL YEAR IN ‘BALANCING ACT’