Derby is being unfairly singled out for bigger cuts in funding for local services than almost anywhere else in the country.
House of Commons Library research, commissioned by Labour’s Shadow Communities Secretary, John Denham MP, has revealed that Derby will suffer larger cuts in funding than most other areas in England.
The programmes have not been announced but the Con/Dem Government confirmed that the cuts will not fall on dedicated schools grants, Sure Start funding, and Formula Grant - which all councils receive according to a set of formula.
Instead, the cuts will be focused on areas of funding, such as specific grants which are for programmes targeted where help is needed the most. This includes help to tackle unemployment in areas of high worklessness and support for the elderly to live independently in their homes.
The research has shown that the greatest risk of the cuts to the funding of local services is in areas that include some of the poorest neighbourhoods in England. This will leave funding for Derby’s local services at risk of a 19.4% cut from the Tory-Liberal Government.
It is part of the coalition government’s £6.2bn of cuts that were announced on 24 May, of which £1.165bn - nearly 20% - is being pushed onto local government and local services.
Implementing the cuts in this way means communities with the highest levels of deprivation and areas facing the greatest challenges will be affected the most with the greatest risk to their funding, while shire districts, mainly Tory run, face the least risk to their funding, such as the council covering David Cameron’s Witney constituency which faces an estimated 1.7% risk to its funding.
In my view we need to bring down the deficit but the way the Tory-Liberal Government is proposing to do this is unfair. David Cameron said we are all in this together. Of course we now see how false this is as poorer areas will bear more of the burden. The Tory-Liberal Government’s claims of fairness are shown to be hollow. Under Labour the standards of local services on which local people rely greatly improved. These improvements are now at risk and the poorest communities will suffer the most.
The information that was provided to John Denham MP on 27 May 2010 by the House of Commons Library showed wide variations in the impact of these cuts. The total amount of money given by central government to local government is known as Aggregate External Finance (AEF). It shows the estimated 2010/11 AEF for each local authority in England and consists of the revenue support grant, ringfenced grants and other specific grants including area based grants and redistributed business rates. Councils raise money on top of this through council tax.
The likely cuts vary in scale from 0.5% in Tory shire districts to 19.4% in Derby. Only 29 out of 352 local authority areas will experience bigger cuts that Derby
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