Government slammed over Council funding claims

Local MP Lisa Smart has slammed the Labour Government over what she called “wildly misleading claims” about increases in the local government funding settlement and its impact on Stockport. 

The Government has changed the way that it calculates councils’ core spending powers, so that council tax – and increases – are included in the calculation. However, when the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government wrote to the MP recently about the local government settlement, the increase in funding seemed to be solely attributed to the central settlement.

Liberal Democrat MP for Hazel Grove constituency Lisa Smart said: “I think that the local government settlement is a million miles away from where it should be, and to shuffle the cards to try and hide this is disgraceful. 

“If you were to read the Government’s letter, you would assume that the 15.6% increase in core spending over the next three years came from the supposed generosity of the Government, rather than including a 5% increase in Council Tax every year.

“The Government has sat on its hands on social care, while the cost of this to local councils has gone through the roof. To ignore that local people’s hard-earned money is paying for this, and to try and take credit for it beggars belief.”

Stockport Council made an appeal to the Government to include the remaining metropolitan areas of the country in its Recovery Grant Funding, which it missed out on by just 0.01%. The funding settlement that they have had means that a whole range of non-statutory services will be under threat over the three year settlement, including swimming pools, libraries, gyms and more. 

Lisa Smart added: “The Government is making local councils take the blame for its poor spending decisions. It’s not good enough, and they need to get a grip on it.”