Speaking in the Assembly Chamber, North Wales Assembly Member and Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, Mark Isherwood, has called on the Minister for Housing and Local Government to meet with a Cross-Party delegation of Flintshire County Councillors when they visit the Assembly to air their grievances over unfair funding for local authorities.
Nine out of 22 Welsh Local Authorities receive an increase under the Welsh Government’s Local Government Settlement 2019-20. However, with the exception of Denbighshire, which now receives a flat settlement, all North Wales Councils receive a cut, with the largest cuts in Flintshire, Conwy, and Anglesey, alongside Monmouthshire and Powys, at - 0.3%.
In November last year, Labour-led Flintshire County Council launched its #BackTheAsk campaign in full Council and received the unanimous support of all Councillors of all Parties to “take the fight down to the Local Government Department in Cardiff to get a fair share of national funds”.
Mr Isherwood is backing the campaign and previously stated: “there is an overly bureaucratic, complex and outdated funding formula that is resulting in skewed local government finances”.
This week, he again referred to Flintshire’s campaign in the Chamber and asked the Minister, Julie James AM, if she will meet with the Councillors when they come to Cardiff.
He said:
“Last November, Flintshire Council launched its #BacktheAsk campaign in full Council, and received full and unanimous cross-party support to, quote, ‘take the fight down to the Local Government Department in Cardiff to get a fair share of national funds’.
“In a subsequent letter to the Welsh Government, he (the Leader of Flintshire County Council) stated, alongside the Chief Executive, that ‘the disparity in formula-based funding inevitably creates a wide variation in the financial risks in Councils in Wales, and Flintshire is at the extreme end’.
“I've now been copied in on a series of e-mails between Councillors of all Parties - including the Leader - where they're proposing to come down, as a cross-party group, here, to, quote, 'Take our budget grievances direct to Cardiff'.
“Will you be willing to meet the Flintshire Councillors who come down, to discuss their, quote, 'grievances', and see whether there are any grounds for addressing those together?”
The Minister said if possible she will meet them, however she currently doesn’t know the date on which they're planning to come down.
She added: “However, I've just come from the finance sub-group of the Partnership Council for Wales this morning where the Leader of Flintshire Council was a participant. I think we had a very amicable and useful conversation there about the way that the formula works.
“I specifically asked if there were any areas of the formula that people wanted to revisit. We're very open to revisiting the formula, as long as it produces the kinds of results that all of local government want to see. That meeting went very well and there were no dissenting voices to that. So, I don't really recognise the picture that the Member paints there.”
Mr. Isherwood added “A 20th January e-mail from Council Leader Aaron Shotton to a cross-party group of Flintshire County Councillors included ‘I will be requesting a meeting with relevant Ministers while we are down at the Senedd’.”
