The council funding smokescreen

Along with the press notice on the spending settlement for local councils there was an intruiging .pdf file entitled "A Plain English Guide to the Local Government Finance Settlement for 2011-12".

Amongst the various explanations was one for a new measure called "Spending Power" that Mr Pickles claims was requested by bodies such as the Local Government Association.

It includes factors such as revenue from the NHS, but makes it difficult to make direct comparison with the previous grant settlements.

Hmmmm.

I sniff the whiff of a smokescreen.

Isn't it a long way from plain english to describe for example cuts of nearly 15 percent in taxpayers cash for local services as "less than one percent"?

And yet that's what seems to be the true situation in Hampshire. Check out these comments this evening from Ken Thornber, the very experienced, Conservative leader of Hampshire County Council, who said:

"Hampshire will see a cut in its Government grant of £31m or 14.3% which is higher than the average cut announced as part of the comprehensive spending review earlier this year. In 2012/13 the Council will lose from its grant a further £22m or 11.6%.

"This dramatic reduction in our grant is as bad as we expected having known for a while that local government faces significant cuts in its government funding over the next four years"

On the "plain english" figures from DCLG Dorset appears to be the biggest winner in the country with an INCREASE of 0.25% in "spending power".

But tonight they've confirmed that they're pressing ahead with 700 job cuts, whilst scratching their heads at the government figures, this from the press office:

"Unfortunately we still haven't received official confirmation of Dorset's Government grant settlement. Even taking into account announcements which have been made at a national level, we are unable to provide an accurate comment/reaction this evening because of the complexity of the information currently available."

So when this evening an e-mail arrived from Eric Pickles himself entitled Putting You Back In Control and promising freezes in council tax going forward I found myself spending an extra moment or so trying to read between the lines...

This is important. If we really are being trusted with local control we need to hear it plain, simple and unadorned.

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