Gavin Barwell is MP for Croydon Central. He blogs here. In his Emergency Budget in June, the Chancellor set out his plan to accelerate the pace of deficit reduction through a mixture of spending reductions and tax increases (about £4 of the former for every £1 of the latter, in line with the international evidence […]
Redbridge Council has been consulting residents on where the axe on spending its should fall by allowing interactive budget setting on its website. As I blogged before my criticism of the process is that any proposed spending cut prompts the computer to offer a dire warning that a service cut would inevitably follow. But despite this […]
Interesting debate on Local Government funding in the House of Commons on Monday. The Shadow Communities Secretary Caroline Flint said: "In Birmingham, 26,000 staff have been warned that they could lose their jobs." Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary responded: "The unions have intentionally misled on the issuing of section 188 notices, which allow the terms and […]
By Jonathan Isaby Another day and another example of the kind of public sector waste which will come to an end as more and more transparency is demanded of councils and spending is regularly published online. Ross Grant, the Tory group and opposition leader on Leicester City Council has exposed the Labour council's profligate spending […]
When he was Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley used to talk approvingly of a local council in the US which used to meet once a year to award the contracts. Selby District Couincil seem to be moving towards that model. They propose to save £3 million by cutting its staff from 300 to 14. Instead they would […]
As mentioned before I am rather a fan of Caroline Flint the Shadow Communities Secretary but she does seem too have got her figures muddled on Council job losses. (I refuse to accept the alternatve explanation that she is engaged in deliberate scare mongering.) In my opinion there is a strong case to be made that […]
Councils that have put aside significant amounts of money in recent years should not shy away from dipping into their reserves in tough times to help manage the consequences of the economic downturn, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said today. All councils keep large sums of money in reserve so that they have a financial […]
More on the story from last Thursday that the Local Government Association was claiming “140,000 council jobs set to be shed in the next year.” Not only were the figures based on press reports for each council plus when there were no press reports with "missing values were estimated." It turns out that the LGA […]
The Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has attacked the Local Government Association for "scaremongering" over the impact of spending cuts in Town Halls. The LGA have put out a press release calling on the Government to ease the cuts – before they even have the figures of how big the cuts will be. The have suggested that […]
The extremist credentials of Len McCluskey, the new leader of the Unite trade union have already been well documented on this site (although not on the BBC.) Yet the Government is continuing to hand over our money to Unite. It is true that they have scrapped the Union Modernisation Fund but as the Taxpayers Alliance have […]
Mark Wallace, Senior Account Manager at Portland Communications and author of the Crash Bang Wallace blog, says the Government should not take tthe blame when councils make painful cuts first The coalition government has taken the first, crucial steps towards reducing the deficit. Like most budgets, local government faces spending cuts that are essential to getting our country out […]
I went to a meeting on Tuesday where the Mayor of Hackney Jules Pipe was complaining about the prospect of cuts in the contribution from central Government to his £1.1 billion budget. He thought there could be "front loading" of grant cuts of 20%. He seemed to be plucking figures out the air as […]
The Observer has a piece this morning about "an inner London Council" (teasingly they don't say which one) from whichthey have got leaked papers about spending cut options. I suspect it is a Labour council as the tone is pretty defeatist with quotes from a Council Cabinet Member about how there "isn't an option" about cutting […]
Last year I wrote a blog entitled 100 ways to cut the Council Tax without cutting key services. It's probably time time I updated it adding another hundred. But to be getting on with there are hundreds of ideas on this blog by Jon Harvey. He wrote to councils asking for small, specific examples of how […]
Cllr Teresa O’Neill, the leader of Bexley Council, is being open about where savings are planned Today we’re publishing our plans to reduce Bexley Council’s spending by £36 million over the next three years. To achieve this we need to reduce spending by one million pounds every single month – a very tough target, but […]