Savaging local councils

To The Guardian

John Harris correctly identifies the lack of media interest in, and reporting of, local government as a key factor in its impoverishment. It has led to this and the previous government being able to undermine locally delivered services without being called to account. After all, who cares? Such has been the patronising dismissal of those who lead our local councils that the cognoscenti really don’t know or care – until their local library is threatened with closure or there is insufficient budget to manage the roots of their favourite tree which must therefore come down.

The overweening centralism of government in our country is neither new nor down to one party. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown failed to devolve powers locally, and did not establish the protections needed to safeguard the services they introduced.

But the unremitting attacks we have seen since they left office have gone largely unreported. How many

Guardian readers know that the coalition government’s change of funding formulae has been the major cause of such chaos in many, mostly northern, towns and cities? Sheffield, for example, has lost half its non-earmarked funding. Funding formulae? Hardly sexy reporting material, yet the consequences have been dire. The Government has thus achieved two of its objectives: to cut public services; and to do so without impacting on its electoral heartlands. What we have really needed is goodquality, well-informed, thought-through reporting: knowledge that could have made a difference. Vicky Seddon, Sheffield