Little did I know that the press release I put out on August 8th would hit national TV. The following day our funding crisis at SpArC – the Bishops Castle Leisure Centre in south west Shropshire –was front page of the Shropshire Star. Most of the County has been given a year’s reprieve to try to find revenue funding for their Leisure Centres. Not so for four centres in the South of the County. We face an extra 25% cut and a cut of £65,000 in education funding for SpArC alone.
The community are rallying. We are fundraising to raise £50k to insulate the pool, the building and reduce energy costs and usage. We have raised over £36k already. The cuts for us this year were a kick in the teeth.
Last week I was minding my own business delivering leaflets (for our by-election) at the base of the Longmynd with my colleague Cllr Nigel Hartin from Clun (who had just been bitten by a farm dog) when my mobile rang – a novelty in itself with our poor mobile signal – Channel 4 News wanted to come and film. Could I get parents and children there? Was this possible? It is August. Teme Leisure who run the Centre pulled out all the stops and parents and children poured in. We managed it together.
Channel 4 fitted our cuts into an item on elite funding and the Olympics, the Obesity strategy and the funding cuts threatening grass roots leisure. They quoted the LGA’s Leisure funding figures which are truly appalling. In 2010 £1.4 billion was spent Countrywide on Leisure and in 2020 it is expected to be only £650 million. In rural areas such as this one in South West Shropshire the population is low but the travel distances are huge. If this centre goes then so does swimming (which is statutory) for 8 primary schools, exercise on prescription, sports clubs, the theatre and Flicks in the Sticks, the PE facility for the Secondary school , over 50’s swimming to name but a few. A bleak future, but we have been given a showcase on National TV.
At some point we have to draw a line on austerity when it threatens mental and physical health, children’s education and social life and impacts hugely on other services. These could well cost the tax payer much more in the long run. It has a real possibility of turning our rural area into a service desert. When will someone in Central Government begin to join up the dots?
C4 even labelled me a Lib Dem! Really good news as we are fighting a by-election but no-one told them that.
* Councillor Heather Kidd is the Liberal Democrat Group Lead on the People & Places Board that covers Rural Issues at the Local Government Association. The LGA is a politically led, cross-party organisation that works on behalf of 415 councils (in England and Wales) to ensure local government has a strong, credible voice with national government.
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2 Comments
It’s great to hear about the successful coverage of your campaign and how people came together.
It is worrying that rural areas are so often perceived as wealthy with residents able to look after themselves. I know from my own work that any wealth that is present often masks islands of deep deprivation within the countryside, leaving already disadvantaged children with access to almost nothing when rural services are cut.
I do hope that some of these cuts can be reconsidered.
Heather Kidd
At some point we have to draw a line on austerity when it threatens mental and physical health, children’s education and social life and impacts hugely on other services. These could well cost the tax payer much more in the long run
I think we reached that point a long time ago. We are well into the position where most cuts in government spending have adverse long-term effects which result in more spending in the long run, and that spending is less effective as it is fire-fighting rather than productive. We are in a downward spiral where the political right forces more cuts, that result in more spending, then they say “Oh, but no real cuts have been made, government spending is as high as ever”, so they push it that way even more.
We should not call this “austerity”. The true meaning of that word is a culture which eschews frivolous luxury. Given the ever increasing ration of executive pay to ordinary workers’ pay, we have a society which is more about frivolous luxury for those at the top than ever. A truly austere society would concentrate on higher taxes for the rich, because that is tax on the money that is above that needed for necessities and so is going to be spent on frivolous luxuries.
We need to make it more clear: there are no inefficiencies left in government to make easy cuts, there hasn’t been probably for about 20 years. If people want government services, they need to realise they need to be paid for: taxes have to rise. Unfortunately, the effect of this misguided “austerity” means reversal really means even higher taxes than would have been necessary had it been tackled earlier on. But that’s the only way to reverse the disastrous downward spiral.