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Increase in Government's formula grant to B&NES - yet again

Commenting on the local government formula grant, North East Somerset's MP Dan Norris said:

"The Government's formula grant to B&NES Council has yet again been increased. It's up by over 1.5 million - four per cent - this year. Indeed, the Government's four per cent funding increase for English Councils for next year, announced in late November 2009, is the THIRTEENTH straight year of above-inflation increases for authorities overall.

"The formula grant awarded by the Government to B&NES is rising this year from £39,976,000 to 41,559,000 million - an increase of £1,583,000, or four per cent.

"Labour's commitment to funding local Government and the front line services that local council tax payers rely on is a world away from the Tories' approach: Labour is again raising the formula grant, while the Tory Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury promised if elected the Tories they would be "unashamedly top down" in dictating cuts to local services.

"In any case it is hard to take seriously criticisms about funding from an authority that has been dubbed the most incompetent in country over the Bath Spa fiasco, which ended up costing tens of millions of pounds of council tax payers' money.

"The Tory councillor in charge of B&NES finance is himself on the record admitting that B&NES' home-grown Spa disaster will cost taxpayers a whopping five per cent increase on council tax again this year - as it has for the last few years. Without the Bath Spa that this dreadful council wasted our money upon, there could be a council tax CUT next year, just as there could have been last year, and the year before that.

"Indeed Tory-run B&NES has a track record of actually refusing to accept monies offered by the Government - to help make it free for under-16s to swim in local pools, for example - giving the impression they don't need any additional money or are incapable of using it.

"Any serious local politician would have made efforts to talk with the local MP in the party of Government if he or she genuinely wanted to advance the case for additional funding. Yet despite having issued an open invitation to senior councillors to come and talk with me should they wish to press their case on any funding issue, they have failed to do so.

"Here's another example of Tory councillors wasting council taxpayers' hard-earned cash: Published figures show Tory councillors have given huge pay rises to the Council's Chief Executive over the past three years. At a time of recession and belt-tightening, resident ask would any serious finance chief be making it a priority to increase the salary of someone already being paid up to £150,000 a year - hiking it in the region of £20,000 as B&NES Tories have done?"

Notes
1 In a letter to Bath Chronicle, published 19 January 2006, B&NES Tory finance chief Cllr Malcolm Hanney admitted: "The spa will now cost more than five per cent on council tax in 2006/07 and every year thereafter."

2 Conservative Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond MP said in October 2009 that a Tory Government would be "unashamedly top down" in dictating cuts to local services.

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