Thank you Madam Mayor. Can I firstly thank Officers, the
Cabinet and the Leader for their work on the Budget.
I also want thank all our council teams and staff across
the Borough. Our staff and teams are seeing the reality of austerity and the
cuts.
They have faced increasing pressures on their services,
resources and budgets and that means it’s not always been easy for them. I want to thank them for all they do.
I do want to start off by saying something about the Local
Government Financial Settlement. It is hitting the poorest and the most
vulnerable the hardest.
The Government and the Tories in this room may say they are
putting more money into local government - about £1.3bn in core spending power
but over £1billion will be cut from the core government grant. And a lot of
this additional funding is one off bits of money – we need a much more long term
settlement and that is still missing.
Government Ministers have taken more out of the Communities
and Local Government Department thank any other – leaving local areas to pick
up the pieces.
After a decade of cuts you can’t say there are no
consequences because of that.
The shortfall of funding in social care is impacting
hospital admissions.
With homelessness figures rising the government has finally
realised there is a problem but this has meant local welfare provision teams
have been inundated and housing officers have been dealing with increasing
pressures of homelessness and rough sleeping.
If we look at rising violent crime Sajid Javid and the Home
Office have realised that we need more police officers on the beat and have
kindly said we can pay for it by increasing the council tax precept.
And of course youth services have been impacted and we know
what can happen when there is a void.
From 2020, Ministers no longer want to take account of
deprivation when it comes to funding. We are already facing unfair cuts with
Kirklees facing more drastic cuts than the likes of Surrey and Maidenhead.
House of Commons Library figures on core spending power
show Kirklees, deprivation rank, 94 has faced a cut of core spending power of
£420 per household while the Prime Minister’s local authority, Windsor and
Maidenhead, deprivation rank 306 faced a core spending power cut of £205 per
household.
It is a fact, unfortunately, that you are likely to die
younger if you are poorer and we know in Kirklees we have an average life
expectancy gap (between the most and least affluent areas) of 9 years.
The Government’s own research shows deprivation is one of
the best predictors of the cost of basic services. So I really don’t understand
what they are doing. It is really shocking.
We also have a 1 year budget because we don’t know how
local government will be funded going forward. There are too many uncertainties
with the fair funding review and spending review.
What do the cuts mean in reality?
increasing numbers of children
in temporary accommodation
more request for social care
support and child protection orders every day
and bus routes lost to
communities across our borough
But despite all of this, Councils like ours are doing some
great work. I am encouraged by our focus on placed based initiatives,
additional funding for mental health initiatives and domestic abuse services
and the investment in dementia services and youth provision. I believe Labour councils like ours will make
a difference for our communities.
