Conservatives Favouring Wealthy Councils

PRESS RELEASE

16^th February 2016

Conservatives Favouring Wealthy Councils

The Government recently announced "transition funds" for Councils that are struggling with cuts to their budget, but it appears that these funds favour wealthy Councils over cash-strapped ones that desperately need the funding.

For example, if Leicestershire County Council had a core spending power per dwelling similar to Surrey County Council, they'd have an extra hundred million per year. Yet Surrey has received a £12 million transition fund - nearly four times as much as Leicestershire has received.

Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent and Essex all have significantly higher spending powers than Leicestershire. They also received far more in transition funding. The wealthy Councils in the South East appear to have been given more transition funding than the entire North and Midlands combined.

That said, Leicestershire fared better than other Councils in the East Midlands. Despite being one of few councils to have a lower level of spending power than Leicestershire, Northampton's transition funding was only half the size. Lincolnshire, the Council with the lowest level of core spending power per dwelling were only given £11,000 for their transition fund - a mere 0.1% of the grant being given to wealthy Surrey.

This raises questions as to whether the Tory Government is really providing these grants to help the councils that are struggling, or unfairly penalised by the funding formula, or whether it was merely to buy the loyalty of sharp-elbowed Tory MPs to ensure they voted in favour of the settlement.

Simon Galton said: "We welcome the extra funding Leicestershire has received but it's important that we recognise that this isn't about fairer funding as the biggest share of the funds have gone to councils that are not in need.

If Leicestershire is going to get a fair deal from the Government, the Tories need to make sure that help is given based on need, and not going to wealthy Councils that need it least."

Notes:

"Core spending power" is the Government's measurement of the overall revenue funding available for local authority services, including Council Tax, locally retained business rates and government grants. More info: