North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has criticised the Labour Welsh Government’s Local Government Funding Formula for penalising Flintshire and other parts of North Wales.
Intervening on Labour AM Mike Hedges during this week’s Assembly Debate on the Local Government Settlement for 2018-19, Mr Isherwood said it is unfair that Flintshire, Wrexham, Conwy and Anglesey County Council’s receive substantially less than the best funded local authority in Wales.
Speaking in the Chamber, he said:
“How can you justify a situation where, for example, Flintshire in nineteenth position gets £368 less per head in revenue for local government than the best funded authority? Wrexham is eighteenth. Conwy is fifteenth, despite it having the largest oldest people population in Wales. Even Anglesey, the poorest or least prosperous part of Wales per head, is the eleventh lowest funded. That is an unsustainable formula, surely.”
Mr Isherwood added: “This should be about fairness, not robbing Peter to pay Paul, recognising that the essential cost of local services is the same everywhere, and that the existing formula continues to ignore local needs in many parts of Wales whilst continuing to throw money at subsidising, rather than tackling, the symptoms of problems in other parts of Wales.”
Mr Isherwood has previously described Labour’s long standing local government formula as “clearly past its sell by date” and said “It has long penalised North East Wales, whilst incentivizing the least prosperous parts of Wales with the highest levels of economic inactivity to remain that way”.