Shadow Minister for Local Government and Communities, and North Wales AM, Mark Isherwood, has challenged the Welsh Government this week over its Local Government Funding Formula which is penalising local authorities in North Wales.
Questioning the Local Government Minister yesterday, Mr Isherwood, who has repeatedly said it is unfair that Flintshire, Wrexham, Conwy and Anglesey County Council’s receive substantially less than the best funded local authority in Wales, asked what measures are being taken to ensure North Wales Councils do not miss out in the future.
He said:
“The Welsh Government tells us that its Local Government Funding Formula is heavily influenced by deprivation indicators. Anglesey is one of five 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, this financial year, Cardiff had a 0.9 per cent uplift, whereas Anglesey was in the group with the biggest cuts alongside four others, including Conwy and Flintshire. How will you ensure that a better measurement of those deprivation indicators will not put Anglesey and other affected Councils in a similar position again?”
In her response, the Minister said; “We have a constant review group working very hard on making sure that the indicators are as they are. The local government family is itself responsible for this, and Anglesey, as many other councils, have seats on both the financial and the distribution sub-group.
“We offer all the time that a local authority who thinks that the measures are not right should come forward and put its suggested adjustments into the distribution sub-group formula, and we work through what that would mean for the local authority family overall. That offer is always on the table, as it is now.”
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 funding formula as “clearly past its sell by date”.
