Betts wants answers on Cameron’s council cuts claim

14 Oct 13
The chair of the local government select committee has written to Prime Minister David Cameron asking him to justify his claim that councils face only a 2.3% cut in resources following June’s Spending Review.

By Richard Johnstone | 15 October 2013

The chair of the local government select committee has written to Prime Minister David Cameron asking him to justify his claim that councils face only a 2.3% cut in resources following June’s Spending Review.

Clive Betts said the Local Government Association had contradicted the government’s assertion that council spending would only be reduced by 2.3%.

At the June Spending Review, Chancellor George Osborne announced a 10% reduction in the resource budget for local government in 2015/16. However, he said that when other changes were taken into account, including the part-localisation of business rates, the practical reduction would be only around 2%.

However, the LGA has since stated that local services will actually face a cut of as much as 15% in real terms in 2015/16 due to some funding being held back for national programmes.

Betts highlighted Cameron’s claim from earlier this month that councils would face ‘relatively modest’ reductions in funding.

‘The extra cuts amount to 2.3% – it’s not impossible to do,’ the prime minister told the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme.

Betts said that both the Treasury and Department for Communities and Local Government had refused to reveal how the 2.3% figure has been calculated.
‘This is clearly unsatisfactory,’ he said.  ‘Either the 2.3% figure has been arrived at by appropriate and careful calculation – in which case such analysis should be transparent and open to scrutiny – or it has been plucked from mid-air.

‘Therefore, I have now written to the prime minister requesting him to place his analysis in the public domain with immediate effect.’
Betts also called on Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles to provide more information about the extent of the funding reductions to improve clarity for councils.

‘Eric Pickles… has been forthright in his assertions about transparency, so I am confident he will support this request,’ he added.

However, a spokeswoman for the Department for Communities and Local Government stated the 2.3% figure was correct.

‘The Spending Round 2013 set out that the overall reduction in government spending, including the local government settlement, social care funding, grants from other government departments and council tax receipts, will be just 2.3% in 2015/16,’ she added.

‘The Department for Communities and Local Government will publish full council spending power figures in the usual way in the Local Government Finance Settlement this autumn.’

CIPFA chief executive Rob Whiteman said the 'mounting controversy' around the government’s figures illustrated the need to reform how local government funding is allocated.

'The system is highly susceptible to the see-saw of political influence and is well overdue for fundamental reform,' he said.

'CIPFA has repeatedly called for an independent grants commission to be established to bring transparency to the issue. The commission would advise government, openly and on the public record, helping to resolve local government funding and to make its distribution fairer and based upon genuine need.

'The evidence for such an independent commission is compelling and the continued lack of transparency around the 2.3% figure only reinforces the case.'

Spacer

CIPFA logo

PF Jobsite logo

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top