Rebellion grows over funding for rural councils
Our petition on rural services funding is picking up a bit of a head of steam – lets hope the ripples from it stretch ever further into the thought world of those who make the key decisions! This useful article tells us:
“The threat of a major backbench rebellion is being used to force ministers to give rural councils a fairer share of local authority funding.
Petitions collected in 119 rural constituencies – including seats right across the Westcountry – were yesterday presented in Parliament calling for the gulf between grants given to rural and urban councils to be closed.
The Rural Fair Share campaign claims rural councils receive 50% less money per head than their urban counterparts due to the Government’s skewed funding formula.
The MPs want the gap closed when the Department for Communities and Local Government next month unveils the latest local authority spending settlement.”
Its worth just quoting from our press release what this is all about in a little more detail:
Size of the Rural Penalty
- We agree that calculating the rural penalty is inherently difficult, but the various methods discussed with DCLG all put it at 50% or greater
- The Government’s claim that “funding per head of population is reducing less in predominantly rural authorities than in their urban counterparts in all classes of authority” is grossly misleading. There are no rural London Boroughs or Metropolitan Districts, so their very high funding levels are completely excluded from DCLG’s comparison
- The 2013/14 settlement did indeed include improved formulae for rural authorities, but three-quarters of any gains were removed through damping and the Government does not intend to allow the rest to reach authorities until at least 2020
- The 2013/14 settlement gave the areas most dependent on grant the smallest reductions in funding, but the proposed 2014/15 and 2015/16 settlements completely reverse that position, giving the smallest reductions to those who are already benefiting from their high taxbases. This operates to the detriment of a majority of rural areas as well as all the most deprived authorities