KIRKLEES GRANT
All local authorities are told by Central
Government that they have to do certain things (Statutory Duties), and in many
cases government prescribe how they have to be done. To pay for these things
the government decides how much businesses each pay in Rates, they decide what
the “Rateable Value” is and what it is multiplied by to work out how much you
pay. The Rate is collected by your council, who keep half and hand the other
half over to Central Government.
They also value your house to decide how
much you pay in Council Tax, they then tell your council how much they can
charge, the council collects this money and keeps it all.
Because the sums above are not enough to
pay for the services that the government say they have to do, every year each
council are given a “Revenue Support Grant” (in Kirklees £22,824,955). This
grant used to be worked out on a formula on a basis of need; this was scrapped
by Eric Pickles and replaced by a system at the whim of the current minister.
Now there are reasons why different
councils get different amounts of grant the most obvious being the number of
people each authority serves. So if we divide the grant by the population of
each authority we can compare the grants. This is over simplistic but a
starting point.
In West Yorkshire the differences are at
the least interesting;
Population
|
Grant
|
Per Head
|
|
Bradford
|
534,300
|
£48,538,924
|
£90.84
|
Wakefield
|
336,800
|
£22,348,765
|
£66.36
|
Leeds
|
781,700
|
£46,482,482
|
£59.46
|
Calderdale
|
209,800
|
£12,357,086
|
£58.90
|
Kirklees
|
437,000
|
£22,824,955
|
£52.23
|
This is nowhere as simple as the
explanation above implies, no one can say that Local Government Finance is simple;
it is believed that the two people who do understand it have both been committed.
That does not mean we should not try to understand it, especially as the
government are doing yet another review of how Local Services are financed, to
some degree dictated by the crisis of funding Social Care and the massive
impact underfunding has both on the lives of individuals and the finances of
the NHS.
There is something wrong with a system
that sees the average council tax for a Band D property in London being £500
cheaper than a Band D property in Yorkshire. There is something wrong in a
system that allows a Minister to give extra cash to where he lives. There is
something wrong where Kirklees is the 322nd (of 326) worse funded
Local Authority in the UK.
The local Kirklees Conservatives think
there is nothing wrong with the system, the then leader of the Conservative
Group on Kirklees stated at a council meeting. Kirklees is getting less now
because the Labour Government gave them too much money, and all the Government
is doing is making it fair by giving councils down south more money.
I am not optimistic about the review.
