It really cannot be said enough times how damaging under-funding in local government is, if ministers do backtrack on their word and leave councils across England with a £10bn black hole it will require catastrophic cuts.
For the last ten years councils have been the front line, delivering vital public services that people rely on and that trend has continued in the last two months whilst we have been fighting against the coronavirus. It is local councils that have been doing everything they could on the ground to tackle coronavirus in their communities.
Here in Oldham, it is the council that have been organising in partnership with groups like Action Together to ensure that vulnerable people can still get the food and supplies that they need whilst they have no other access to it. Without the council the foodbank’s distribution hub at the Oldham Leisure Centre would not have been possible.
And the government knows that it hasn’t been easy, and government knows that it promised ‘whatever funding is needed for councils to get through this and come out the other side.’ Oldham Council estimate that their response could cost up to £46million, so far from government have promised to reimburse just £14m of that. When you take into account that Oldham council has lost over £200m in funding since 2010, you have to wonder how government thinks that councils will manage.
If councils are forced to make cuts it’ll be those key workers that we clap for every Thursday who are hit hardest, if government breaks its funding pledge to communities some of them would face losing their jobs.
Local authorities are the biggest funders of social care in England, and analysis done by the Labour Party shows that the cuts councils may be forced to make would be the equivalent of 225,000 vulnerable people losing the support which they usually rely on. A £10bn Coronavirus black hole could mean that across England, £3.5bn is cut from adult social care, £2bn cut from children’s social care and a £700m cut to local public health.
It’s not just social care where the cuts would be felt, there’d be funding gaps in other already stretched public services, including libraries, children’s centres, leisure centres, public parks, road safety and neighbourhood services.
Jim McMahon OBE MP 