Local Government Finance (Rural Authorities)

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

May I say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the telling off you gave me was the nicest one I have ever had?

I want to give a practical view of where we are. West Somerset district council—my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) knows it well, but it will be better known to most colleagues as Exmoor—has 30,000 people in 260 square miles. It has a budget of just £5 million and is in severe financial difficulties. One of its problems, not just now, but over many years—this goes back a long time—is that it has battled against various Government cuts. It has now got to the stage where, unless severe decisions are made, it will no longer exist. It has had to sign a protocol with Taunton Deane council—the next-door borough council, which, I am glad to say, is Conservative—enabling it to be helped with both the budget and the taking over of resources.

The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) has been to West Somerset to help, so he is well aware that the grant has been cut over many years. Although he has managed to find the council a bit more money this time around, it is only worth 1%, or £45,000. A 3.7% increase in rates is only about £40,000, given the low base.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) made the point about the cost of living in rural areas. It shows in West Somerset. Unfortunately, if this situation continues, West Somerset will not be the only one. I can assure all colleagues that other district councils will be in the same position in a few years.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the significant problems is that the cost of delivering services in rural areas has simply not been reassessed for many years and that it is high time that that reassessment took place?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Lady was at the very top of the list, but she has now dropped down. I did warn people what would happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

The stark contrast between rural and urban areas is clearly demonstrated in my constituency, part of which is drawn from the urban unitary area of Southampton and the rest from the rural area served by Test Valley borough council and Hampshire county council. They are good councils working hard to deliver top-quality services at the most economic cost. They are rightly proud of their combined record in that regard, but they face difficult challenges because of the very nature of the geography they must cover.

Hampshire is a county where town and country often meet, and where it is not unusual even within boroughs for there to be massive contrasts between the relatively highly populated urban centres and the vast rural areas where populations are much more spread out; where schools serve vast areas but comparatively fewer children; where refuse collection is much more challenging just because of the sheer miles to be covered; and where there are real problems in delivering adult social care because the distances for carers to travel between elderly residents in need of assistance are significant.

Those of us representing rural areas can point to examples, and what we see as the challenges, but the difficulty is that there is little hard evidence. Instinctively, we may feel and see differences between rural and urban, but research by the Department is desperately needed to assess the extent of the disparity. Rural councils cannot demand comparative evidence from their urban neighbours in order to make a proper comparison, but such a comparison is desperately needed.

In Hampshire, a population of 1.3 million is spread over 1,400 square miles—it is the largest county in the south-east of England. But its size brings about very real challenges. The 5,000 miles of road not only need to be maintained properly, at a cost of £60 million a year, including Operation Resilience, which completely resurfaces Hampshire’s roads, but—as we can see today—those same roads need to be gritted and snow-ploughed.

Of course, we cannot guarantee that residents will live in the most accessible parts of the county. We cannot be assured that schools will be easy to access. In Hampshire, there are 500 schools varying in size from just 50 pupils up to 1,800. In small villages in particular, delivering education presents a challenge and prevents councils from achieving economies of scale. In the Southampton part of my constituency, primary schools have an average number on roll of nearly 250, whereas in some of my village schools the figure is only 50. That is not to say that provision is any harder or easier; it is just different.

Councils that have to provide services such as education and transport have become expert at doing so. However, in many instances it is more and more of a struggle to cut their cloth sufficiently sparingly to go around. As I said earlier, it is important to have comparators and that a reassessment be done, so that when we stand in this Chamber and make the case for rural areas we can do so from a base of knowledge and evidence.