By Cllr Jason Brock
Last week I joined councillors from across the country at the Local Government Association’s annual conference.
When you are so Reading-focused, this event can sometimes be helpful in terms of understanding the bigger picture in local government, whether that’s hearing fresh ideas which could be of benefit here or discussing challenges that we have in common.
You may have seen the key headline coming out of the conference was how rising costs – the same rises which are affecting every one of us in our day-to-day lives – also pose a serious threat to the viability of some councils and threaten the essential services they provide to residents.
The LGA report states that soaring energy costs and spiralling inflation will combine add another £2.4 billion in extra costs onto council budgets this year. This is predicted to rise to £3.6 billion in 2024/25.
I always think quoting astronomical figures such as these doesn’t really mean a lot to the ordinary person on the street. It’s not really something any of us can relate to, unless you’re a billionaire yourself… which I’m not.
What we can relate to is the possible impact on the council services we all use. I’m thinking of things like bin collections, road resurfacing and pothole repairs, street cleaning, libraries, leisure centres, theatres, community centres, homeless prevention, and adult and children’s social care, to name just a few of the higher-profile services.
Just as all of us make decisions about what we spend our household money when the cost of living soars, so every local authority will have to do the same about their own budgets.
Local government has been here before, of course.
Under Labour, Reading Borough Council worked tremendously hard to successfully stabilise its finances after a decade of huge cuts in funding for local government at a time of increased demands in services, all driven by Conservative austerity.
The LGA estimated that between 2010 and 2020 councils lost almost 60p out of every £1 the Government had provided for services.
While other councils shut libraries for good (and Surrey County Council famously proposed a 15% per cent Council Tax increase in 2017), in Reading we kept our libraries open and worked tirelessly to squeeze out savings which minimised the impact on the frontline, finding better ways of working and making the very best use of our buildings to work more efficiently.
I think what’s different this time around is that many local authorities are already stretched to the limit after the austerity years.
Savings are going to be hard to find when so many have already been made.
With the cost of living rising unabated and showing no signs of slowing anytime soon, the LGA said last week that councils are facing a perfect storm with demand for services rising while the cost of providing services escalates.
Councils are often the first port of call for people struggling with rising food and energy bills. The LGA was also clear that central Government needs to step-up to ensure councils have the resources they need to help protect services that are helping our communities recover from the pandemic while helping residents through this crisis.
This Government likes to talk about its ambition of ‘levelling up’, but that’s something this Council has been talking about in Reading for a number of years now.
It’s interesting to me that it can make over £5 billion available nationally for projects which fit this agenda (indeed the Council is bidding for its own portion of this money to modernise the Hexagon and build a new Central Library), yet when it comes to the mechanics of day-to-day council business, the Conservatives fail to see the link between funding local authorities properly and levelling up local communities.
I also think it can sometimes be easy to dismiss criticism from politicians as partisan gesturing. I understand that, but I find it’s particularly important to listen when those words come from a politician of the same political hue as the current Government. Here are the words of Cllr James Jamieson, the Conservative Chairman of the LGA, last week: “Inflation is not going to come down overnight. As our analysis shows, the impact on our local services could be disastrous. This will stifle our economic recovery, entrench disadvantage, and undermine government ambitions to level up the country.”
We can only hope that his Government is listening.
Cllr Jason Brock is the leader of Reading Borough Council and Labour ward member for Southcote
