Many English councils say they have been hit by worse-than-expected funding reductions from the Government – leaving some facing multi-million pound budget shortfalls for the coming year.

The scale will become clear in the coming weeks as councils meet to agree their budgets for 2016/2017, but already many are warning they will have to put up council tax by close to 4% and deliver further cuts to services.

Services ranging from children’s centres, short breaks for disabled children and bus subsidies to funding for theatres, museums, community gyms and projects encouraging people to stop smoking and preventing domestic violence are under threat.

Local authorities across England are also considering putting council tax up by the maximum level permitted of 3.99% including an adult social care premium, which would see bills go up by £47 a year for a Band D home in some parts of the country.

Other charges, from garden waste collections to bereavement services, are also set to rise in some areas.

And a study by the GMB union union found that over 25,000 jobs are under threat because of cuts to services, including 3,000 in Glasgow, 1,800 in flood-hit Cumbria and 1,200 in Birmingham.

A radical shake-up in the way the Government is allocating its revenue support grant for councils, which is being phased out by the end of the decade, has left many councils facing deeper cuts than they expected in 2016/2017.

Town hall leaders have sought meetings with ministers and written to the Prime Minister and Chancellor warning them of the impact of the cuts, with some saying they face not being able to meet their legal duties or be “viable” as councils. …”

East Sussex County Council, a Tory stronghold since its creation, said the Government’s fiscal policy would “significantly reduce the quality of life for many people in East Sussex”.

The letter to the PM was signed by Councillor Keith Glazier, who leads the council, and the leaders of the other political party groups in East Sussex.

… “The fact that leaders of all parties have put their names to this letter shows that this is an issue which transcends politics,” Mr Glazier said.

“We have done everything possible to ensure we bear our share of the burden of reducing the national deficit, and produce a balanced and responsible budget, but the savings we are now having to make will place a heavy burden on some of our residents.

“We’re calling on the Government to acknowledge the impact of funding cuts, particularly on social care authorities, to work more closely with local councils and to adopt a fairer approach to the way it allocates funding.

The letter was signed by Labour, Liberal Democrat and Ukip group leaders on the council, as well as the leader of the area’s independents group.”

In a letter sent to Oxfordshire County Council, in response to its cabinet’s warning of the “devastating impact” of cuts, the prime minister said he understood it will be challenging to make further needed savings – but urged it to reconsider its plans.

“Oxfordshire and other councils must continue to reform the way they work to become more efficient, both in back-office functions and in front-line service delivery,” he said in a statement today.

“The recent Spending Review… made it possible for councils to sell property assets and use the capital to invest in transforming local services – and ensure further savings.”

Earlier this week, the council’s leader, Cllr Ian Hudspeth, was “desperately sorry” to announce that cuts to the county would have to go even further than imagined, with these options once considered just a worst-case scenario that councillors believed would not be needed.

“The clear message from our budget consultation in the autumn was that making proposed savings would have a real impact on people and communities,” he said. “We will be doing everything we can to help communities manage their impact. It should be remembered that this is our sixth consecutive year of having to make cuts and by 2020 we will have completed a decade of savings.”

The letter from the prime minister follows similar correspondence in November, after which Cameron was accused of breaching the ministerial code by offering special help to his Witney constituency in the face of looming cuts.

The exchange triggered a wave of criticism of ministerial hypocrisy at the time, as well as accusations that the prime minister failed to understand the impact of his own government’s cuts.

This was further exacerbated when Hudspeth sent a letter to Cameron detailing, in a six-page analysis, accurate figures showing the depth of the county council’s financial plight, despite reductions in back office expenditure.

Speaking to the Oxford Mail this morning, Cllr Hudspeth said the county council’s deep cuts were a result of the government’s “difficult decisions to reduce the national deficit”, an aim which it had always been clear about.

“There is no row. We are two men trying to do very difficult jobs in a difficult situation,” he said. “The county council is using its reserves, selling its property assets and working on co-location with other authorities to become more efficient, so to be quit honest Mr Cameron and I are both saying similar things.”

Overall, Oxfordshire has been forced to bring savings originally proposed for future years back into 2016-17, as well as slash spending in certain areas in a one-off basis, including library services and training budgets. It also warned that there will be more cuts to come after the council assesses whether there are different ways of working, with a lot of debate still expected in the coming months.

http://www.publicsectorexecutive.com/Public-Sector-News/cameron-asks-his-constituency-to-look-again-at-devastating-cuts

Speaking during the debate in the House of Lords – in which peers eventually voted 290 to 192 in favour of an amendment to that will force the Government to publish annual figures on income-related child poverty – Lord Northbourne said some families preferred a lifestyle dependent on state support.

It was quickly pointed out to him, by the Earl of Listowel, that two-thirds of children in poverty have at least one parent in work.

The 89-year-old peer and Kent landowner is the fifth Baron of Northbourne and his son, Sebastian James, featured in the Bullingdon Club society’s 1987 photo, alongside David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

…The NAO said that nearly 80% of the Portfolio projects due to be delivered by 2019-20 were to either transform or change the way that services were delivered or accessed.

However, transformation programmes could present the greatest risk of failure and there was a need to balance ambition and realism in setting goals, it argued. “For instance, the Better Care Fund was a challenging initiative which ministers paused and redesigned after the early planning and preparations did not match its scale of ambition.”

The watchdog described progress in improving portfolio management as “disappointing”, with no single organisation having a view of the whole portfolio of government projects.

“The Portfolio provides increased assurance, and other central departments have an increased role in assuring, approving and improving quality of delivery,” the NAO said. “But an effective mechanism still needs to be developed for prioritising projects across government or judging whether individual departments have the capacity and capability to deliver them. The NAO has often reported on the difficulties caused for government projects by unrealistic expectations and over-optimism.”

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: “I acknowledge that a number of positive steps have been taken by the Authority and client departments. At the same time, I am concerned that a third of projects monitored by the Authority are red or amber-red and the overall picture of progress on project performance is opaque. More effort is needed if the success rate of project delivery is to improve. “