by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
A pot of £280million is being given to councils so they can continue to improve services from crucial skills and jobs programmes to arts facilities for young people to town centre regeneration projects, announced Local Government Minister Rosie Winterton on March 31, 2010.
For example Waltham Forest will invest some of their £1.8million grant to help fund their National Skills Academy for Construction which aims to train over 5,000 residents from some of the UK's most deprived wards. In Durham £5.4million will fund projects to strengthen broadband access, support vulnerable groups most at risk from recession, youth work projects and a site for developing green projects. In Rotherham some of their £2.9million grant will go into town centre projects to get more people coming to the town including extending free parking and a new arts centre.
Almost 90 councils across the country have earned the funding for making a range of service improvements on specific targets over three years including:
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reducing the number of children killed in road traffic accidents in Enfield
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reducing the number of people on Incapacity Benefit in Hertfordshire
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establishing new Healthy Schools programmes in Nottingham City
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increasing the number of adults qualified to NVQ Level 2 in Durham
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increasing recycling by schools and public sector sites in Hampshire
Ministers are determined that local people get the high quality services they are entitled to and that local councils are central to delivering them. The Government will support successful councils with these grants to invest in current local priorities so they can continue to protect frontline services, build their local economy and create jobs in a tighter financial climate.
Rosie Winterton said that she is giving councils a further £280million to deliver better local services, drive regeneration and create economic renewal in their areas.
Maybe one should remind the minister that it is not her money that she is given away and having termed it that government is allocating said sum of money would have been a better phraseology.
“Strong elected local authorities are key to meeting the challenges we face today,” the Minister said, and continued, “As local leaders councils know their areas and its unique challenges best and with the continued Government support being made available today they can meet local priorities from care, to libraries, to youth services - that matter most to their residents.
“There is no doubt that councils will have tough choices ahead as finances become tighter, but that is no reason to lower their sights on delivering service quality people rightly value. To help we've cut targets, reduced the red tape burden and freed more funding from ring-fencing so councils can focus on the services local people need in their area.”
Since 1997 councils have had a 45 per cent real increase in government funding and will receive an average 4 per cent core funding increase in April. The recently announced funding comes on top of that and local authorities need to ensure they are providing value for money by protecting the frontline services that matter most to their areas.
The last Budget, the last one before the general election, set out how local public services can propose radical changes to improve services in their area, increase efficiency and develop new local outcome targets for local people. This goes beyond individual authorities and amounts to a significant and collective shift in the way that all public services work from health and social care to policing and children's services.
The recent funding is based on targets met over three years, from reducing carbon emissions, supporting business, and tackling anti-social behaviour that are set out in their Local Area Agreements. Performance Reward Grant is paid in the financial year after the Agreement finishes.
The government behaves, once again, as if it is money that it has earned from somewhere that it is giving away but it is not. It is money that the council tax payers and other tax payers, you and I, if you live in the UK, have paid and from which our local services should be paid.
However, unlike with most of our EU counterparts, local taxes do not stay local but go to central government first where it is then decided what amount of money goes back to any particular area. A total unfair system and it is time that we adopted the same system as is used in the majority of other EU countries where taxes are raised and used in the local area.
© 2010
