Blackburn with Darwin Council (BwD) has lost about £148 million in government grants since 2010, about 48% of spending power, and is one of the worst affected in the country. The proposed cuts this year attack children and the elderly. School uniform grants will be scrapped; up to five children’s centres will be closed and opening hours of libraries, swimming pools and gyms will be reduced and charges increased. At present 5,325 families qualify for school uniform grants of between £24 and £56 per pupil. BwD has the sixth highest level of child poverty in the UK with more than 8,000 children going hungry, 30% of all children. Nearly 17% qualify for free school meals. 2.4% of 4–5-year-olds and 1.5% of 10–11-year-olds are underweight.
The council admits that these inequalities existed pre-Covid-19. The number of lollipop persons will be halved and spending on road safety education, maintenance of traffic signals, road signs and speed-calming measures will be cut with 500 job losses. These cuts affecting children will save £75,000 over two years. Street lighting will be cut to save £1 million over five years. The council wants a 3.99% increase in council tax.
Four old peoples’ homes are being phased out, transferring residents to new developments and reducing their care in their own homes to save £1 million a year, cutting costs at daycare centres and reducing direct payment rates to personal assistants. The majority of care is privatised. Hundreds of care workers are paid less than a living wage, less than they would get in a supermarket. 77% are on zero hours contracts. There is a 40% staff turnover rate and thousands of pounds owed in unpaid wages.
The ONS found that 20% of people in BwD are ‘income deprived’ with £13,741 per year average income and 50% of local neighbourhoods among the worst in England. 7,500 claim housing benefit, 16,000 claim council tax support. There were 2,400 summonses for non-payment of council tax in one month from January this year, 9,723 this year to date. Bailiffs have been used 1,926 times since last November. The council plan to make claimants pay at least a fifth of their council tax and cut support for households on low incomes, costing each household £250-£300 a year.
When these plans were put to a public survey last December the responses showed a healthy contempt for the council. People wanted to scrap the mayor, reduce the number of councillors and their expenses and cut the higher paid senior management. 72% opposed the the council tax increase and two thirds wanted protection for those on disability and incapacity benefits.
A Labour councillor said, ‘These are very difficult decisions … it seems the government is penalising the North of England for voting Labour’. To be more precise, when the government wants cuts it knows where to look because Labour councils are the most compliant and law-abiding, the most fit for purpose. Without them the cuts couldn’t be made. Labour has closed down the Trade Union Education Centre in Blackburn.
BwD is the ninth highest in England for empty properties: 2,400 or 4% of homes. For the last six years it has been in the worst five for homeless deaths: 42 since 2013. Last year it was second worst. Ten sleeping pods for the homeless have been closed saving £100,000 over four months with no guarantee they will reopen next winter.
When the £20 per week Universal Credit payment is cut in September BwD will be the fifth worst hit town in England. The Big Issue has warned that this autumn there will be an avalanche of homelessness when the UC £20 uplift ends, furlough ends, gas and electricity prices rise and evictions and repossessions increase. 1.9 million jobs are at risk.
The Blackburn Labour Party website is both complacent and threatening: austerity will ‘affect the less well-off who are more dependent on council services than the more well-off members of society … the situation will only get worse and the impact on the less well-off and poorer members of society will grow’. We need a fightback. We need the working class to become the ruling class. We need socialism. Compare Cuba’s revolutionary response: a former colony, it has suffered an illegal US Blockade for over 60 years, depriving the economy of more than $1 trillion, yet still provides free healthcare and education from cradle to grave. How is that possible? We need to tell people.
Pete Lynch
