What It’s Like To Slash Millions From Council Budgets: Local Authority Leaders Speak Out | HuffPost UK

After a decade of deep and sustained reductions to local government budgets, councils across the country must find further savings next year as main grant funding, the money local authorities receive from central government to provide services, is cut by a further £1.3billion (or 36%).

HuffPost UK has been exploring how the loss of individual services at a local level link up to paint a national portrait of austerity in our series What It’s Like To Lose. As part of that, we have asked council leaders what it is like to sit at that table and decide where to put the black lines.

The task was described by one former Labour finance chief as “brutal” while another Conservative town hall boss said in some ways the role was “a poisoned chalice”.

It does show that we are really, really short of money that we’re actually doing this. I mean there is no money.Richard Cornelius, Conservative leader of Barnet Council

Local authorities have already lost 60 per cent of their central government funding over the last decade, substantially more than any other area of government.

And it is in the loss of valued frontline community services that the impact of this austerity drive is most keenly felt by communities across England.

Regardless of their political stripes, the council leaders each called on central government to invest in local government saying the cuts have now gone far enough. But some were keen to say that this should not be at the expense of further borrowing by government.

So acute are the financial challenges that even the most basic services – such as libraries, school lollipop patrols, street lighting, road repairs, cemetery maintenance, gritting – are now being considered for savings.

HuffPost UK delved into reduction proposals at five local authorities across the country, and found all of these services mentioned in the various plans.

 

Source: What It’s Like To Slash Millions From Council Budgets: Local Authority Leaders Speak Out | HuffPost UK

Employment may be at an all time high in the UK, but austerity, low pay and zero hours contracts inflict misery on millions : The Conversation

The UK government has asserted that “employment is at a record high” with 32.5m people in work, the highest figure since 1971. It took to Twitter to trumpet its success but failed to mention further findings from the Resolution Foundation, a non-partisan think tank that aims to improve living standards for those on low and middle incomes. In response, the foundation tweeted that this “impressive employment record” takes place alongside the “biggest pay squeeze” in over two centuries and huge cuts to state welfare.

 

Source: Employment may be at an all time high in the UK, but austerity, low pay and zero hours contracts inflict misery on millions : The Conversation

UN Says Solution to UK Austerity is to Make Poverty Illegal : Global Citizen

After a 12-day tour of the UK, a report from UN envoy Philip Alston has said the UK government’s policy of austerity has inflicted “great misery” on the public.

Alston is what’s known as a “rapporteur,” an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to objectively examine how a country is performing on a certain issue.

During a press release on Friday, Alston said the UK was in potential breach of four UN human rights agreements: women, children, people with disabilities, and economic and social rights.

 

Source: UN Says Solution to UK Austerity is to Make Poverty Illegal : Global Citizen

Children in Need is wonderful, but we shouldn’t need Pudsey to feed our children

This is all correct, but this is why charities exist, for no matter what the state provides, there will always be a need to provide more. The State is central based, while many of these charities are locally based. Or in some respects they are more to the ground than Central Government and in many instances local public bodies.

The major difference now, due to austerity, is that the need for charities is even more so as austerity is greatly increasing poverty and destitution to an even greater number of families and to families further up the scale of wealth. This means that families who previously would not need this help are now requiring it.

Not only should austerity cease immediately, but there is urgent need for funding taken away to be brought back also immediately.

Without any delay the massive cuts to local authority budgets and in some respects health need to be guided to social care in all areas and in deprived areas.health.

Otherwise in the near future, if not the immediate, social care will cease to exist and health will only be available to those who can afford it.

It took a UN envoy to hear how austerity is destroying lives

This is all good that the UN envoy is listening and including it in the forthcoming report, but what guarantee is there that our Government will listen and then react accordingly.

When you are a member of an organisation there should be penalties when members disregard recommendation, etc.

Is there, in fact any country or organisation that really listens and then acts accordingly to any part of the UN, where is its teeth.

Labour’s new DWP pledge is only a half measure | The Canary

Labour has clarified its position over a contentious Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy. But when you check it, it really doesn’t go far enough; potentially leaving millions of people worse off than they should be.

The DWP: freezing all over

In April 2016, the government brought in the benefits freeze. This meant the DWP would not increase the amount paid for some working age benefits until April 2020. It followed a cap on increases at 1% from April 2013. The benefits affected are:

• Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA).
• Child Benefit.
• Housing Benefit.
• Tax credits.
• Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) Work-Related Activity Group.
• Universal Credit (not disability elements).

The government said the freeze would save it £3.9bn a year. But now, Labour has moved on the policy.

Labour making moves

As Mirror journalist Dan Bloom tweeted, Labour’s position on the benefits freeze was unclear:

 

Source: Labour’s new DWP pledge is only a half measure | The Canary

Even Tory councils are now calling on ministers to ease the pain of cuts | Patrick Butler | Society | The Guardian

The anguish of austerity cuts may have come late to the leafier Conservative-run councils of England but there is no doubt it has arrived. Reflecting on the eye-watering spending cuts stricken county halls must push through this year and next, the Kent county council leader Paul Carter declared to a Tory conference fringe meeting last week that “no Conservative came into local government to do this”. The room, packed with councillors, exploded into applause, accompanied by booming cries of “hear, hear”.

The meeting pulsed with anger, bewilderment, despair, possibly even regret that the austerity chickens have come home to roost in Tory England. Most councillors there would have accepted town hall belt-tightening eight years ago as a necessary obligation at a time of national economic crisis. Few, I suspect, assumed then that their civic duty almost a decade later would be to shut cherished services and strap local government on to the life-support ventilator.

Source: Even Tory councils are now calling on ministers to ease the pain of cuts | Patrick Butler | Society | The Guardian

Local councils will be pushed to failure if austerity continues

Austerity kills: this week’s figures show its devastating toll

I have been saying this for some time, that it is Government policy to kill, the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled as that is a sure fire way of reducing the benefits bill. If claimants die then that is less claimants.

I call it Governmental Euthanasia,

Don’t blame councils for the harm done by government ideology | Joanne Fry | Society | The Guardian

Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty has vividly described “pulverism” – the idea that councils should use financial crises not merely to make savings but to smash up and reshape the public sector – and claims it has gone nationwide.

No it hasn’t, at least not in my experience of working in all kinds of councils around the country over the past decade.

Most councils, far from being ideological about smashing up the public sector, have been trying their best to mitigate the impact of the ideology and policies of austerity that successive governments have put in place since the coalition introduced the first round of cuts in 2010.

 

Source: Don’t blame councils for the harm done by government ideology | Joanne Fry | Society | The Guardian