Councils up and down the country are gearing up for the most savage round of cuts to local services since the unleashing of austerity measures in 2010. A new report from Unison states that because of inflation, soaring energy bills and increased demand for services councils face a record £3.2bn funding gap for the financial year 2023/24 and that this is set to increase to £5.3bn in 2024/25. They plan to fill this gap with service cuts and council tax increases. This will be the 14th consecutive year of cuts since 2010. Some local authorities have presided over cuts totalling more than half a billion pounds. Services have already been cut to the bone, yet the next round of cuts councils vote on in March 2023 will be on an unprecedented scale.
- Birmingham Labour council is predicted to be in line to make the biggest cuts: a staggering £80.1m in just one year.
- Liverpool Labour council – £73m in 2023/24. This will bring the total cut to over half a billion pounds since 2010.
- London Councils, representing London’s 32 borough councils and the City of London – £700m next year.
- Newcastle Labour council – more than £63m over the next three years. That will bring the total cut since 2010 to £410m.
- Manchester Labour council – £96m over the next three years. The biggest cuts will be to social care.
Local services have been starved of funding by the government. Councils fund services through central government grants, council tax and business rates. This revenue has fallen by 16% since 2010, with central government grants cut 37% in real terms between 2009/10 and 2019/20, from £41.0bn to £26.0bn in 2019/20 prices. The National Audit Office estimates that central government funding for councils almost halved between 2010/11 and 2017/18. It is the poorest, often Labour-run, areas that will be hardest hit. This is because people in these areas rely on council services more and because those councils cannot raise as much revenue from business rates and council tax as wealthier areas. This represents a huge transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
The response of Labour councils has not been to fight back and set budgets based on the needs of the community, but instead to be utterly complicit with the attacks on the poor by continually slashing services and increasing council tax. Councils have been allowed to increase council tax by between 2% and 3% annually without a referendum since 2012/13. The threshold will increase to 5% next year, ostensibly to help pay for social care services. 95% of councils will increase council tax by the full amount, ensuring that the cost is borne by the working class. Labour councils complain about the pressure they are under to set ‘balanced’ (ie cuts) budgets, but have entirely failed to lead any kind of resistance. Their talk of public ‘consultations’ ahead of the final votes on the 2023/24 budgets is posturing at democracy – a shameful exercise in passing on to residents responsibility for where the axe will fall. No council has shown itself prepared to breach the Labour Party diktat that makes even the meekest opposition to a cuts budget a disciplinary offence. The poor are trapped in a vice with the Tory government on one side and Labour councils on the other.
County Councils Network (CCN) chair Tim Oliver stated that there is no more ‘low-hanging fruit’ left for councils to cut. More than 780 libraries, for example, have already been closed since 2010 with the loss of 10,000 staff. Now, the CCN warned, many councils will provide only the most stripped-down ‘core offer’ – essentially only statutory services, such as essential social care, services to protect children at risk of harm and neglect and a basic level of roads maintenance.
Funding cuts to the NHS have left the healthcare system on the brink of collapse; any further cuts to local social care services will exacerbate the problem. Labour councils are absurdly claiming that they will make ‘efficiency savings’ by safely reducing demand for social care services. This is impossible. Demand has already massively increased because of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis and will sky-rocket over the winter. Vulnerable people will be put in danger and their quality of life will dramatically deteriorate. Waiting lists will continue to grow and services will become means-tested with the bar for eligibility raised so that they become nigh on impossible to access, as councils provide the bare minimum in an effort to stave off financial bankruptcy. This is likely to include a reduction in early help support for families, cuts to children’s services and training for social workers, cuts to support plans for adults and a reduction in time spent with people by home care staff.
The Conservative government could never have implemented these levels of cuts without the Labour collusion. The few Labour councillors who have voted against cuts have been expelled. It is abundantly clear that you can be a Labour councillor or you can fight the cuts. You cannot do both. It is therefore up to local communities to take up the fight themselves. Nothing short of this will do.
Mark Moncada
