Britain is discovering that the local is political, that civilisation begins with good access to social care and regular bin collections. Slash funding to local authorities over 14 years by at least 30% in real terms because Conservatives believe they are unloved, do nothing useful and, in any case, local politicians can be blamed for local cuts, and inevitably baleful consequences begin to emerge.

Will Hutton www.theguardian.com 

The first round of cuts in everything from youth services to the provision of public lavatories could go by largely unnoticed, but now we are at a tipping point. Thus, cumulatively, local authorities have closed 60% of public toilets since 2010: three in four people report shortages in their area. Core provision of support for helpless elderly people and disadvantaged young people is increasingly stretched, and on occasion almost abandoned. Local authorities as builders of social housing on any scale are a distant memory. Neglect and civic shabbiness have settled over every community in the country, with a refurbished library or civic centre a rarity. It turns out that a vibrant local public realm is as important to our wellbeing as the private.

The financial crisis in local government, as a cross-party committee of MPs reported last week, is now out of control. Denied the financial wherewithal to fulfil their basic statutory duties, nine councils have effectively gone bust since 2018 – five, the latest Nottingham, in the last 12 months – with the Local Government Association predicting that one in five risk that fate over the next two years. The financial vice in which councils are locked – eviscerated resources alongside ever-rising demand – is airily dismissed by ministers as the consequence of mismanagement, profligacy and the pursuit of absurdly grandiose schemes, confident that councils are not a popular cause. Local government can be hung out to dry.

Yet just as the condition of our prisons is a yardstick of our civilisation, so is the vigour of local government and the esteem in which it is held. As privation piles on privation – the closure of a much-loved library or gallery, roads whose resurfacing is long overdue, care homes that are disgracefully overcrowded and understaffed, even the inability to contain growing populations of vermin – the cumulative impact is forcing recognition that there must be change. We are all being diminished.

It was Margaret Thatcher who began this assault. If local democracy threw up local politicians with different political agendas to hers she would rein them in under the guise that there should be no challenge to a sovereign parliament. Thus the 1986 Local Government Act, which simply abolished the metropolitan councils governing most of Britain’s urban population – notably Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council – and the outlawing of “propaganda on the rates”. Her next step was to try to eliminate those hated rates and substitute them with a flat rate poll tax: councils should live on short rations and only get central funding if they toed the government line. The ensuing revolt helped trigger the end of her prime ministership.

Britain’s politicians of all parties read the runes. She had succeeded in degrading local government, but in the process made constructive reform toxic. For over 30 years, nobody has dared revalue the residential property values on which the revised council tax was based in 1991, creating a revenue shortfall of up to £20bn a year, as Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies roughly estimates. So regressive is this tax that the Economist reported last week that Buckingham Palace is charged less than a three-bedroom semi in Blackpool. Local government’s role in our national life has decayed and shrivelled.

Councils try everything to escape the vice. One London council, Barnet, took the Thatcherite mantra to heart, and contracted out virtually all its local services in 2012. It has been an expensive fiasco – and a newly elected Labour authority is bringing services back in house to stop budget overruns and regain lost efficiencies. The more general trend, as Professor Andy Pike writes in Financialization and Local Statecraft, has been to try to turn easy credit and rising property values to civic rather than private advantage – a strategy adopted by local politicians of every political hue as central government starves them of resources. But lockdown, rising interest rates and a property market recession has turned that into no less of a fiasco.The system is bust. The secretary of state for local government, Michael Gove, has offered a £600m sticking plaster to stave off a debacle during an election year, but the quid pro quo is capped council tax increases and unspecified productivity improvements. In fact, as the MPs’ committee recommends, local government needs an immediate unconditional £4bn. Fat chance. “Localism” – declaring that control must be given back to localities – may be the new rage, but there is no parallel desire to give local government the financial capacity to be a creative local actor, let alone fulfil its statutory duties. What is required is a commitment to the value of local community, and reforms to support it.

A minimal starting point, as academics Kevin Muldoon-Smith and Mark Sandford argue, is the re-establishment of an annual needs assessment local area by local area – just as other G7 countries such as Italy, Germany and Japan do – suspended in the cause of austerity in 2013. Then, like nearly every other advanced economy, there must be a system of equalising every local authority’s financial capacity to meet those identified needs, and the creation of a statutory body independently to negotiate the rolling financial settlements that result. Beyond that, it is obvious that the system of property taxation needs an overhaul: it can’t be right that the rich property owners pay proportionately vastly less than their poorer peers. On top, enlarge what local government can do – it can help in everything from decarbonising the economy, building social housing and addressing knife crime.

Labour electoral “ strategists” will cavil at such commitments for fear they will be attacked by the Tory party. But even pensioners, the bedrock of the Tory vote, can be persuaded that civic pride and public amenity, whether a public library or a public toilet, are invaluable. Labour should have more confidence. We can’t go on like this.

Extra borrowing that Devon could need if it fails to secure emergency funding for education would push its debt beyond half-a-billion pounds.

Bradley Gerrard, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

The county council may need to secure an extra £50 million in loans for its spending plans in 2024/25 if it doesn’t receive cash from a scheme called the Safety Valve, which provides grants for local authorities with large education funding blackholes.

Devon’s special education needs and disabilities (SEND) cumulative deficit is expected to hit around £165 million by the end of March.

Although the council has submitted its application to Safety Valve, it hasn’t had confirmation about the funding it might receive.

Recently council officials have expressed hope it could be in the region of £70 million to £100 million.

Members of the council’s corporate infrastructure and regulatory services scrutiny committee heard that financial forecasts suggested £50 million in borrowing would be needed for the financial year starting in April if the council was unsuccessful in its Safety Valve bid.

“While we are hopeful of an agreement with the Department for Education to help resolve the SEND deficit, it would be presumptuous to take the funding into account before a decision has been made,” Mark Gayler, from Devon’s finance team, told the committee.

“So we think we will need £50 million of new external debt.”

He added that due to the recent repayment of £47 million of external debt and the SEND deficit, that the council’s cash balances could drop to around £60 million by the end of March.

That would make it inadvisable to fund new borrowing from reserves, Mr Gayler added, although any it could get is likely to be at a lower interest rate than loans it had just repaid.

If the council did borrow the extra £50 million, it would push its external debt levels to £511 million.
 

Part of Exmouth’s estuary coach and lorry park near the railway station is to be converted into new car parking spaces. 

Will Goddard, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

The adjacent estuary long-stay car park will get 86 new spaces, reducing places for lorries, buses and coaches from 16 to 12. 

It comes as many people report difficulties finding anywhere to leave their vehicles in the town because of the clashing parking schemes of two different councils. 

They are Devon County Council’s new residents’ parking zones in parts of Exmouth, including the nearby Colonies area, and East Devon District Council (EDDC)’s all-day £2 winter car park offer, which runs until the end of March. 

On average fewer than two people paid for parking each day at the estuary coach and lorry park between April and December last year.

Cllr Olly Davey (Green, Exmouth Town) told a meeting he thought 12 spaces for coaches and lorries would be “sufficient” and 86 new car parking spaces “would make a difference”.

He said: “I walk past [the coach and lorry park] on a regular basis. I’ve never seen more than six or seven vehicles in there, and that’s a busy day. 

“I did take a photograph recently, there wasn’t a single vehicle in that lorry car park.” 

But Cllr Brian Bailey (Conservative, Exmouth Littleham) disagreed, saying there would not be enough spaces for coaches. 

He said: “In the summer, there are as many as 14, 16 coaches a night, and they stay for a period of usually two weeks with foreign students.  

“This is a good income for Exmouth, and it’s been established with the English language school for many, many years, and these proposals would disrupt that entirely as far as I can see.” 

Cllr Geoff Jung (Lib Dem, Woodbury and Lympstone) thought the council should be “working really quickly” to provide more car parking spaces in the centre of Exmouth. 

He said: “There is a big issue with car parking spaces at Exmouth now and there are people saying that something needs to be sorted out immediately. 

“People were moaning on Facebook today that they can’t get into Exmouth to do their shopping. 

“We’ve got a coach park that is hardly used, a lorry park that is hardly used, and we’ve got people very concerned that they can’t find a parking space in Exmouth.  

“And I would have thought that we need to get something sorted very quickly for the residents and the traders of Exmouth before it’s too late.” 

The new spaces in the estuary long-stay car park are expected to cost EDDC around £55,000 to £65,000 to create. but are expected to bring in additional income. 

Devon County Council said last month that it introduced its Exmouth residents’ parking scheme “following a consultation and concerns raised by local residents” and that it “aims to remove all-day commuter parking in residential areas and ensures that residents have priority to park within their own area”.

Map of new spaces at estuary long-stay car park, Exmouth (Image courtesy: EDDC)