Local Government Finance (England)

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Tameside council is an excellent, four-star local authority. It has been highlighted as having some of the best financial procedures of any local authority. It is well managed, and it has met the Gershon savings put in place by the Labour Government with commendation and improved services at the same time. These new cuts are too far and too deep for an authority such as Tameside, however.

Using the Government’s own notional spending power methodology, Tameside’s funding cut will be 1.7% in 2013-14 and 4.9% in 2014-15, amounting to 6.4% over the two years, which is higher than the England average of 5.5% for that period. Those calculations exclude specific grants, of course, such as capital grants, grants for funding education and ring-fenced grants. However, this analysis does not reflect reality for a number of reasons. First, the starting point is taken as the adjusted start-up funding position used in the calculations for the 2013-14 grant, not the actual amounts received in 2012-13. Secondly, the cost of the council tax support scheme is included in both the council tax requirement figures and the start-up funding level, which distorts the reported position.

As was mentioned earlier, further analysis has shown the reduction in spending power, and as I mentioned in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central, it is telling that no council in any region outside the south, with the exception of Cheshire East, has a reduction in spending power of between zero and £50 per person.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

As a Cheshire East MP, may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that grant funding means that Manchester has three times more per head than Cheshire East? If Cheshire East had the same funding it would not need to charge council tax at all and would have £30 million left over.

[Andrew Gwynne]

There we have it! That highlights just how much Government Members do not get it. I am not here to speak for Manchester. I am a Tameside and Stockport MP, and the reduction in spending per head of population in Tameside is £160.98, yet Tameside is the 56th most deprived area in the country with real social needs. That is why this reduction is so unfair, and the hon. Lady just does not get it.

The savings requirements are £26.5 million for 2013-14, £13 million for 2014-15, £31.94 million for 2015-16 and £46.685 million for 2016-17, amounting to a total of £118.125 million over the next four years. That is just wrong—it is not fair in any sense of the word.

Let me briefly run through the kind of savings—cuts—that Tameside’s council is having to make. On adult services, the council is having to: redesign day services for adults; reduce home care packages; streamline care pathways; reduce voluntary sector grants by 20%; withdraw financial support from luncheon clubs; reduce employment services; outsource further homemaker services to the independent sector; and cut health and well-being services. We are talking about £3.485 million of cuts in 2013-14 and £1.388 million of cuts the year after.

On neighbourhood services, the council is putting in place: new operation structures for district assemblies—that means reducing grounds maintenance, and making cuts to parks, street scene and litter removal functions; an amalgamated parks and countryside service; efficiencies in third sector funding; a new, single, risk-based highways function—that means filling in pot holes; and more savings from the libraries review.