Funding for Local Authorities

Ian Liddell-Grainger Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

I started my political life in both district and county council—this is going back to the ’80s—and the formula was just as complicated then. Under successive Governments we have made it even more complicated. I think, dare I say it, that it is all done because if the formula is made complicated enough, no one will understand it and those in government can do what they like. The Government spend a lot of time talking about the spending power of councils. It is not only about that spending power, but about how we get to that spending power and who pays for it. I shall discuss that issue later.

Urban councils are still receiving 50% more per head than local authorities in rural areas, despite the fact that residents in rural authorities, such as Devon county council, pay 15% more council tax, and many public expenses are more expensive to deliver in sparsely populated rural areas.

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

West Somerset, which my hon. Friend knows well, is the most sparsely populated part of England, with the smallest council. As he knows from his days in Somerset county council, we have never been able to catch up with the deficit, simply because the rurality of the area means that there is no way, with our ageing population—it is the same in Axminster—to do that. Perhaps we should look at the future size of these councils to see whether they could provide a joint service to make more efficient use of funding made available through the Government.

[Neil Parish]

I remember West Somerset well from my local government days. The problem is that it has a population of about 28,000 or 30,000, and if it is necessary to have a raft of chief officers to run a council, it becomes extremely expensive. We must come up with a system whereby some of the very small rural authorities can share their chief officers or combine them, because in this day and age it is difficult to deliver with very small authorities.