As we prepare for local and the general election in May, I note the report from the UK’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has warned that more than half of councils are at risk of financial failure within the next five years.
While the Local Government Association has warned that, by 2020, local authorities will only have enough money to provide statutory services.
In general we all have to work to live, and as I talk to many people in and around town, like me, we asked the question about council tax and what people want? The answer is value for money.
This is where the cuts are not working, people want to see clean and safe streets in their towns and communities, also good quality front line services maintained.
How can we expect this to be delivered if the funding is not provided? Despite community policing, people want to see a better police presence and I am talking Lincolnshire here. It cannot be done with less, we are simply going backwards, cuts do not work.
With a 40 per cent reduction in funding during this Parliament, councils have borne the brunt of austerity, with services like libraries, leisure centres and in particular road maintenance buckling under the strain.
Some councils are responding to their ever-shrinking budgets by significantly increasing charges for services that used to be low-cost or free. For example, last month, Labour Party Research, based on Freedom of Information Act requests to local authorities found that not only had “meals on wheels” deliveries to the elderly declined by almost two-thirds under the coalition government, but that their cost had also risen.
We need to see a fair funding settlement for local government that will allow councils to provide secure and good quality jobs without the need to outsource, cheaper is not always the best in the long term because services are just undercut and the taxpayer suffers again as a result.
Going forward we need to see local government getting a greater share of the cake, we cannot combine social care and the NHS on a reduced budget.
Central government must stop seeing local government as the poor relation, community services need to be delivered, grants need to be sufficient and they cannot be used as a cost cutting exercise to balance the national budget.
Councils need to review their revenues and whoever is in government after May 7 we need a fair government settlement. But I know that Labour will be the only party capable of delivering this review in a fair and non-partisan manner in which it will need to be conducted. Without this, nothing can be solved.
Rodney Sadd
Local Labour Candidate
Carrington Road
Spalding
