Local council is shouting about cash cuts – what about county?
OVER the past couple of weeks, this column has looked at the devastating impact government spending cuts have had on Rossendale council.
Rossendale is around £3m a year worse off than it was pre-2010, with the prospect of more spending cuts to come as the government continues to give less to local councils.
But Rossendale isn’t alone. And at Lancashire county council, there are already parallels being drawn to Northamptonshire county council, which recently became the first major council in the country to effectively admit it had run out of money.
In setting a budget this year which included deep cuts to things like the youth offending team, disabled bus pass subsidies and financial support for police community support officer roles, council leader Geoff Driver warned the authority was facing the most challenging period in 130 years.
That’s quite a statement – but he’s not wrong. Despite putting up its share of council tax by almost six per cent - three pc for regular services which barely covers inflation, and three pc to support adult social services – LCC is still on course to have a £144m hole in its finances by 2021.
That gap appears, in part, because the authority is already dipping into its savings to cover the cost of some services – and by the start of the next decade – two years away – the authority will have gone from having £130m in the bank today, to little more than £5m.
That’s despite tens of millions of pounds worth of cuts at County Hall since 2010. In changing from Labour to Conservative control in last summer’s county elections, the only thing that really changed was where the cuts would fall.
The Conservatives in Lancashire are proud of the fact they reversed the decision to close libraries, and have invested more money in subsidising unprofitable bus routes. They also point to more money for repairing roads.
They’ve yet to deliver on the pledge of local Tory councillors and the demand of Rossendale MP Jake Berry to re-open Helmshore Textile Museum, something which politicians of a blue colour have gone very quiet on since they began running the authority again.
But there’s no denying that money is tight – and with the savings which have to be found in the future, the debate surely is how long the Tories can fend off re-implementing the cuts they overturned last summer.
Even then, if they did do that, it wouldn’t be anything like enough. And it begs the question: “What happens then?”
Who will pay to provide daycare to older people stuck in their homes? Who will provide children’s homes? Who will fix the roads? Who will fund the libraries? The museums? The bus routes which don’t pay for themselves? The tips?
It’s easy to complain about the amount of council tax we received and ask what we get in return but the answer is: Quite a lot.
Of course, if LCC were to run out of cash, many of the services I’ve listed there would be run by someone else, probably by people appointed by the government. But why let it get that far?
As this column has argued before, the challenge facing our councils required bold action.
At least at Rossendale council they are shouting loudly about the damage council cuts are doing. There’s no such shouting from Lancashire county council any more, just regular use of words like ‘challenging.’
It’s one thing to complain no-one at Westminster is listening, as Rossendale councillors have said. It’s quite another not to be shouting about the problems on behalf of the people of Lancashire, which seems to be LCC’s peculiar position. And still the cuts continue.