Unfair funding

Yesterday the County Council Cabinet members met three of our Suffolk Members of Parliament, Ben Gummer, Therese Coffey and Peter Aldous.

It is no secret that balancing the books over the next three years is going to prove challenging for the County Council.  It was therefore useful to be able to bend the MPs’ ears about the issue of fairer funding, which has exercised me a great deal since I became responsible for the Council’s resources some two and a half months ago.

I am not alone in making a fuss.    The Local Government Association has criticised the Government for the indiscriminate way that it has imposed its funding settlement on local authorities.  The level of cuts has been applied fairly evenly across the board, and Government appears to have taken little notice of how efficient an individual authority was to start with, or how much scope it has to grow its fee income, business rates and other taxes.

On Wednesday the point was driven home when I went to a meeting for Finance Portfolio holders at Cambridgeshire County Council.  I was shocked to discover that the cuts being required by Government of that large, flexible, and fast growing local authority are only a little higher in absolute terms as those we are being required to find.

The county is also hampered by the fact that our funding settlement in no way compensates for the higher cost of delivering services in rural areas.   The inadequacy of funding to support rural service delivery been well aired on websites concerned about the preservation and sustainability of rural life, and has also been confirmed by the Treasury Select Committee.

I am pleased to say that the assembled grandees were sympathetic to our cause, agreeing that our settlement is indeed inadequate, and also that the funding formulae used by Central Government are woefully outdated.  However, they warned that nothing can be done this side of the General Election next year.  It seems that this has something to do with ‘being in coalition’, that universal excuse for being unable to do anything about obvious nonsenses at present.  I am not sure how seriously I can take their assurances; only time will tell.  We are not planning on any immediate relief appearing over the horizon any time soon.