By Richard Johnstone | 18 November 2013
The chair of the County Councils Network has called on ministers to stop offering cash to authorities who freeze their council tax, warning that the policy was hurting frontline services and was ‘bad for the country’.
Speaking at the County Councils Network’s annual conference in Chester today, David Hodge said the freeze – which has been offered for three years and which Chancellor George Osborne has said would continue for at least another two – favoured authorities that received high central government grants.
But it was hurting those authorities that raise more of their own funding through the council tax, which Hodge said was ‘bad for residents, bad for front line services, and… bad for the country as a whole’.
The CCN would now campaign for ‘radical changes’ to local government finance to be made by whichever party wins the next general election in 2015, he added. The current financial settlement for councils is outdated and does not recognise changing population and demographic trends.
‘This has disadvantaged most English county councils. Today, I call upon government for a fairer funding settlement for England.’
This should also include reform to the current network of 39 local enterprise partnerships, which Hodge said had been given money that should have gone to councils.
‘Too much funding has been top sliced from local government. A new government must reconsider its approach and hand back responsibility to those elected at the ballot box who are best placed to develop economic growth locally.’
Hodge also criticised existing government localism agenda, which he said continued to ‘pour money’ into large cities through City Deals. Agreements have already been reached with England’s eight Core Cities outside London, and 20 more areas are currently negotiating pacts.
‘Of course City Deals will make a difference to those areas – they will help to bring in investment, jobs and apprenticeships,’ he said. ‘But we all know that equal investment in county deals would bring much higher returns for the government.
‘Our people and our places deserve a seat at the same table, to have the same opportunities as cities.’
He added that proposed local growth deals, which will be agreed by government with LEPs from 2015/16 as the basis for devolution of the £2bn Single Local Growth Fund, were less significant that those for cities.
‘We will expose the gap in ambition between City Deals and local growth deals,’ Hodge said.
‘We will make the case for county deals. We will identify the opportunities to transform and redesign services across the public sector, in order to make the most of scarce resources.
‘We will tell the government that communities we serve will not be happy with less funding and fewer services simply because they live in a county and not in a city.’
