Political leaders warn of ‘looming financial crisis’ for councils
No one appreciates how serious the cuts we will be facing in local government in the new year are.This article explains
In a joint open letter to communities secretary Eric Pickles, published on Wednesday ahead of the announcement of the next tranche of local government funding, the leaders of Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester local authorities say the scale of anticipated cuts imposed by ministers mean “vital services” will no longer be able to be protected.
A key excerpt says “Combined with unprecedented spending pressures, particularly in the social care services, the cuts we now anticipate will leave us unable to provide anything like the range or quality of public services we believe our citizens have a right to expect.”
The seven signatories are all leaders of Labour-controlled councils – the eighth member of the “core city” group, Bristol, is run by an independent elected mayor, George Ferguson. The core cities group represents the eight most economically important cities outside London.
The counties are also getting in on the act : Conservative politicians have also publicly complained about the level of cuts. The Tory leader of Kent county council, Paul Carter, warned last week his organisation was “running on empty” while the Conservative leader of the Local Government Association, Merrick Cockell, has called the cuts “unsustainable”.
Last week, one of the signatories of the letter, Liverpool council leader Joe Anderson, predicted the scale of the cuts would spark riots in the streets. Another signatory, the leader of Birmingham city council, Sir Albert Bore said in October that the council expects to see almost half its £1.2bn budget lost to cuts by 2017, prompting him to declare “the end of local government as we know it.”
Councils fear that trajectory of government spending cuts means they will have to “decommission” entire services considered to be non-core, including libraries, arts, leisure facilities, youth services and after-school clubs, while core services so far largely protected from cuts, such as care of older people and child protection, will start to feel the pinch.