Councils hampered by national politicians’ interventions

WHAT an excellent letter from Sir Stephen Houghton about the state of local government finance. To be fair he has more knowledge about such matters than anyone of us.

The real issue about funding local government is that is there is too much national political intervention. For example when there is a Conservative government, funding is directed towards Conservative-controlled councils, when there is a Labour government the reverse is true.

For whatever reason politicians at the national level get too involved with the minutiae of local issues because we are totally centrally governed.

What we need is government at the national level setting out the policy, direction, parameters, and level of finance available for each sector and for advisory bodies (politically neutral) for each sector to determine how the ‘national cake’ will be divided.

Any system must be based on need so that those in the greatest need get the greatest funding. However there are many other issues we need to address. For example we are excellent at providing funding for new projects but we provide little or no funding to maintain them. Why? Well this is a totally shambolic situation.

Over time the project deteriorates and becomes a maintenance priority and we only step in when it’ condition is dire. Why do not we move to whole life capital funding of projects so that they can be appropriately maintained.

Under these circumstances is there any wonder that, up until recently, local councils went for Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) funded projects. These allowed them to replace the facility, e.g. provide new schools, when they were struggling to maintain outof-date buildings which were a total drain on their revenue funds and the PFI included maintenance funding for 25 years.

Sheffield Council went for a highways PFI which replaced their ‘shot’ roads and gave them a long maintenance period at far less cost to the city council. All these schemes came at a great cost to the Exchequer but the recipients got new facilities which they would never have got under the traditional funding system. Steve Houghton is correct in that all these issues need to be resolved so we have a fair distribution of national finances and not one based on political bias.

Equally as a nation we have to decide are we going to fund public services to the level that we want? If not these services are always going to be second rate. Do you want a second rate NHS? I don’t.