Shadow Minister for Local Government and North Wales Assembly Member, Mark Isherwood, has today blamed successive Welsh Labour Governments for the funding challenges currently facing Welsh local authorities, particularly those in North Wales, and called on them to commission an independent review of the Welsh Local Government Funding Formula.
Opening today’s Welsh Conservatives Debate on Local Government Funding, Mr Isherwood put forward a Motion recognising the important role played by local authorities in delivering public services across Wales and acknowledging the funding challenges currently faced by them.
The Motion also noted that Welsh council taxpayers currently pay a higher proportion of their income on council tax than in England or Scotland and “regrets that the level of council tax in Wales has trebled since the formation of the National Assembly for Wales in 1999; and that the level of council tax in Wales has risen at a faster rate than in England and Scotland.”
Speaking in the Chamber, he said:
“From their obsolete local government funding formula to their botched local government reforms, successive Welsh Labour Governments have left councils having to balance the books under sustained financial pressure.
“Nine out of 22 Welsh Local Authorities receive an increase under the Welsh Government’s settlement for 2019-20. However, with the exception of Denbighshire, which now receives a flat settlement, all North Wales Councils are to receive a cut, with the largest cuts in Flintshire, Conwy, and Anglesey, alongside Monmouthshire and Powys.
“Rural councils and North Wales councils have therefore lost out, while Labour-led councils such as Cardiff, with total usable reserves in April 2018 of £109.6 million, and Merthyr Tydfil are this year’s biggest winners, with uplifts of 0.9% and 0.8% respectively.
“This leaves the average household in Wales with a £1,591 Council Tax bill, nearly £100 higher than the current financial year.
He added:
“The Welsh Government tells us that its Local Government Funding Formula is heavily influenced by deprivation indicators. However, Anglesey and Conwy are amongst five Welsh Local Authorities where 30 per cent or more of workers are paid less than the voluntary Living Wage, and prosperity levels per head in Anglesey are the lowest in Wales at just under half of those in Cardiff. Yet, Council Tax payers in Anglesey and Conwy are facing 9.1% increases, compared to only 5.8% in Cardiff and 4.5% in Rhondda Cynon Taff.”
The Welsh Conservatives’ Motion also noted that whilst both the UK Conservative Government and the Scottish Government enabled Council Tax to be frozen in the years up to 2017, the Welsh Labour Government spent elsewhere the £94m in consequentials it received to help hard-pressed council taxpayers.
Mr Isherwood added:
“Their default position is always to blame everything on the UK Government – and to conveniently forget that the ‘Funding Floor’ agreed by UK Conservative Government means that the Welsh Government now benefits from the certainty that the funding it receives for devolved services won’t fall below 115% per head of the figure in England.
“Currently, for every £1 per head spent by the UK Conservative Government in England on matters devolved to Wales, £1.20 is given to Wales. It is the Welsh Government who should be answering for their disgraceful funding decisions.
“Local authorities are sitting on £800 million in useable reserves – and their elected representatives need to be held accountable in saying how this is spent.”
Mr Isherwood also spoke about the particular challenges facing Flintshire County Council, which has imposed an 8.17% Council Tax increase, taking the total increase – including Police, Fire and Rescue Authority and Community Council precepts – to 8.75%, and about the Council’s #BackTheAsk campaign.
He said: “The campaign specifically asked for a fair share of funds from Welsh Government, highlighting that Flintshire is one of the lowest funded councils per head of population. This had been unanimously agreed by all parties on the Council.
“In December, before the final Budget was passed and after the announcement of extra funding from the Welsh Government, Flintshire estimated that it still faced a £3.2m funding gap, stating that “It is unreasonable for councils to be put in this position – and a cross party group of Flintshire Councillors travelled here to lobby for fairer funding last month”.
“Even in Flintshire, however, opposition members had moved an alternative budget, using additional contingency reserves to keep Council Tax increases to 5.5%, arguing that the Labour Leadership had taken the political decision to make a point about Local Authority underfunding.
“Given everything I have detailed, our Motion calls on the Welsh Government to commission an independent review of the Welsh Local Government Funding Formula.”
