It hasn’t come as a surprise: local authorities up and down the land have been preparing for budget cuts for some time. Worst case scenarios have been considered, proposals for cuts drawn up and heads scratched over how the numbers can all be made to add up.
We already knew that council tax would be frozen next year. We now know that the money local authorities get from central government will fall too.
As the HM Treasury press release says
In addition, £1.165 bn of savings will be made in Local Government by reducing grants to Local Authorites to reflect their contribution to the £6.2bn. The Government will also remove the ringfences around over £1.7bn of grants to local authorities in 2010-11, to give them greater flexibility to re-shape their budgets and find savings in the areas set out above, while maintaining the quality of services to their customers
In other words, it looks like local authorities will be cutting and finding efficiencies. That’s on top of the cuts and efficiencies that they’ve already been making over the last few years.
The removal of ring-fencing suggests that local authorities will be encouraged to retain spending on core services, whilst making major cuts to other, non-core services.
We await the detail with interest.
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One sometimes wonders what exactly the money was being spent on in the first place. As part of my council tax bill I received a self congratulatory leaflet letting me know how many millions of efficiency savings had been made. This is despite Coventry having probably the most poorly maintained road system I have ever seen, to the point that people are now suing the local authority for damage to their vehicles. Now this money wasn’t being spent on a visible and extensive problem before, so what on earth was it being wasted on?
I’m enjoying the spectacle of David Laws being pushed in front of the cameras to give the bad news. Clever people these Tories.
Thomas – you may be right, but it’s worth checking before jumping to assumptions. Councils provide hundreds of services, many of them very important to the lives of the most vulnerable in our society and many of them invisible to most.
I’m with Thomas. Our local council pretty well gave up on core services – mending roads and emptying bins – years ago. They’re busy with the “invisible to most” so-called services that benefit a group so small it really is invisible and consists primarily of people with jobs at the local council. I’d just love to see a massive cut it in its budget. And there would be no justification whatsoever for not having a massive improvement in services at the same time.
One of the problems for local authorities is that whilst we all use roads and all have our bins emptied, a fortune has to be spent on social care and schooling, and whilst I can understand people being annoyed about potholes they would surely be more annoyed if there were not enough school places or cuts were being made to much needed social care simply to fix b-roads.
Now i’m a driver, and I wish that my local roads were in a better state, but I understand that there are more important priorities (and I speak as someone who has needed a new tyre due to a pothole quite recently).
I thought that the Tory plan was to reward councils that froze council tax with extra grant money? Oh well…
The good side of this news is the reduction of ringfencing. Hopefully the bill on local government reform expected in the Queen’s Speech will get rid of ringfencing entirely. There is actually real potential to save money or use it more efficiently here. (Not to mention the return of long-lost local democratic control over council budgets!)
Our council announced 25% spending cuts several months ago anyway…
@Iain Roberts: That’s what’s most galling to me. It’s not Maybach’s and Porsche’s that are being damaged here, these roads are in some of the poorest areas of the town. These are people paying road tax, fuel duty, and council tax on transport they struggle to afford in the first place, which is then being destroyed by the council’s inability to provide a basic service.
Heresy being another word for free thought, I do think some form of poll tax is called for. I have benefited from lighter council tax through multiple occupancy so I’m aware of the accusation of pulling up the ladder behind me, but a significant bugbear about t’other one (accepting its kak-handed implementation) was that it made people pay as *individuals*.
Anywhere, I have doubts about regionalization, but it’s especially troublesome in my region (Highland) due to its scatteredness. One broo-haha just now is the idiotic, imho, plans to close Nairn Public Baths – real old-style baths, and not those things called “swimming pools” – which already has brought down the belly-dancing Provost of Nairn.
@ Kehaar: Cutting a popular, big ticket item in response to the pressure to make cuts in order to generate public opposition to them is an old established tactic. See HMS Endeavour in the defence review just prior to the Falklands conflict.