Letter to MPs ref funding settlement
Here is the full text of the joint letter by council leader Shaun Davies and Councillor Lee Carter to our two MPs about the government funding settlement
At our recent Cabinet meeting on 4 January, we considered the implications of the provisional local government finance settlement which was announced on 19 December by Sajid Javid MP.
Whilst this was more or less as expected, we along with the Local Government Association (LGA) and many other councils under all types of political control, were deeply concerned that the national crisis facing the funding of Adult Social Care and Children’s Safeguarding was not recognised and that no additional funding was made available for these essential services which ensure that vulnerable older people and children are kept safe from neglect and abuse and enabled to live with dignity.
If the Government had at least retained their Grant Funding at its current level, that would have made some contribution. Unbelievably, despite these very real pressures, the Government has chosen to continue to CUT our Revenue Support Grant by a further 23% (£4.3m) next year, with a further 30% cut the year after. Even Jeremy Hunt, MP, has now acknowledged that there is a funding shortfall across the health AND care sector. Lord Porter, the Conservative Chairman of the LGA, says “extra funding for social care can empower councils to prioritise prevention work which is key to reducing the pressure on the health service and keeping people out of hospital”.
Regrettably, our latest budget proposals will see the Council facing grant cuts and inflationary pressures continue to make further savings of another £7 million next year and a further £6m in 2019/20 on top of the £110 million we have already saved from our budget since 2010.
The Council will continue its budget strategy agreed last year following consultation, and is having to raise council tax in 2018 and 2019 by 3.2% each year, being 2% for the Adult Social Care precept and 1.2% to make up for the cancellation of the Council Tax Freeze Grants previously provided by the Government. It would require a 21% Council Tax increase alone to cover our funding shortfall and the additional investment we are having to make in Adult Social Care and Children’s Safeguarding! Telford & Wrekin Council has one of the lowest levels of Council Tax in the country.
The Government’s approach to funding councils, in practice, actually penalises those with the lowest council taxes and those relatively poorer areas, like Telford & Wrekin, where there are lower property values and therefore a lower tax base. This is perverse.
To quote Lord Porter again, “the final Local Government Finance Settlement due in the next month is an opportunity to provide genuinely new money to address the £2.3 billion social care funding gap”. The purpose of our letter is to directly appeal to you to support your residents and vote against the final settlement if it is unchanged from the provisional one when it is considered in Parliament. We really hope you will join with other MPs to lobby for a better funding approach for these key local government services. Previously when a group of Conservative Members of Parliament threatened to vote in the interests of their constituents rather than to support a wholly inadequate funding settlement, they were successful in receiving additional targeted funding, although we did not benefit from this.
This is an opportunity for you to exercise real leadership and to put the interests of our residents first. As Telford celebrates its 50th year, it is hard to conceive that you could support more cuts to vital local services! Additional funding could eliminate, or at least reduce, the need for further damaging cuts or reduce the 3.2% increase in Council Tax which we are being forced to ask our residents to pay whilst appreciating that hardly any of them will have seen their incomes increase by anything like this rate.
