If economic growth is being sacrificed as this article implies, where does that put our Local Plan where it is the be-all-and-end-all of it? With no money for infrastructure who will live on new estates with no road connections to employment areas? Who will buy the houses? Who will be able to afford them? Where will the jobs come from with the wages high enough to pay for the houses that young people can’t afford to buy or rent?
” … The Resolution Foundation calculates that, from 2010 to 2019, the budgets for current spending will have been cut by 75% at the Department of Transport, by 64% at the Department for Communities and Local Government and by 53% at the Department for Business. Capital spending is not included in the calculations. By contrast, the NHS budget will have risen by 14% over the same period and the international development budget increased by 40%.
The thinktank questioned whether politicians had thought sufficiently about the reshaping of the state brought about by the mix of cuts and the protections provided to specific departments and age groups.
The foundation said: “While the focus of the autumn statement will largely be on how the pain of spending cuts has been spread around departments – as well as any changes to tax credit reforms – it’s important to step back and consider what the chancellor’s plan means for the long-term role of the state and the support it provides across different parts of the population”.
The thinktank found a growing generational divide since the financial crash, with average spending per head set to fall by 7% for children and 9% among working age adults.
In contrast, spending per capita on older people will rise by about 19% over the same period. By the end of this decade, spending on the state pension will account for more than half of all welfare spending. This is despite the big shift in welfare spending towards pensioners being cushioned to some extent by significant increases in the state pension age since 2010, culminating in a rise to 66 for men and women in 2020.
Continued demographic changes post-2020 are likely to exacerbate the shift in welfare spending towards elderly people.”
East Devon Watch 