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London's services hardest hit by 'devastating' three-year funding announcement
London boroughs have been the hardest hit in the local government funding settlement announced in Westminster today.
The detail of the settlement reveals that London boroughs face a smaller increase in grant to pay for essential services such as social care, children's services and waste collection, than comparable regions elsewhere in the country.
For the next three years the vast majority of London boroughs will receive the minimum increase in grant.
The increase in formula grant for London is at 2.4 per cent for 2008/09, 2 per cent for 2009/10 and 1.8 per cent for 2010/11, which is below the average for all education/social service authorities of 3.6 per cent, 2.8 per cent and 2.6 per cent.
On top of this, Minister for Local Government John Healey MP announced that he will fully implement a technically flawed new formula to distribute funding for vulnerable adults, young people and children's social service.
These new Personal and Social Services formulae unfairly discriminate against urban areas. By totally removing the funding protection for these formulae John Healey MP has taken £420million away from the capital's social services, before floor damping, further penalising the most vulnerable Londoners.
Responding to the government's announcement, Chairman of London Councils Councillor Merrick Cockell said:
"This is a devastating announcement for London boroughs. The settlement unfairly penalises both the capital's councils and their communities.
No account has been taken of the wide ranging additional pressures that London faces as a top world city, particularly those of a rapidly expanding and extremely mobile population.
We hope to persuade ministers in the coming weeks that their proposals are unsustainable in London. If the government pushes ahead with them regardless, boroughs will have to make the unpalatable decision of either rationing services or increasing council tax."
Notes to editors
- Today's Local Government Finance Settlement is the first ever three-year funding announcement
- Councils face actual cuts in many grants including key regeneration fund Working Neighbourhood Fund and vulnerable person grant Supporting People amongst many others (press release to be published on this 7 December).
- London's boroughs already face severe strains on their personal and social care services and many have already been forced to ration their services to people only people with high levels of need.
- Today's settlement ignores threats to council run services caused by inaccurate population data. The population predictions used in this settlement are substantially lower than those published previously; by almost 110,000 in 2008; over 120,000 in 2009 and almost 140,000 thousand lower in 2010.
For press enquiries please contact: Holly Sutton on 020 7934 9842 Holly.sutton@londoncouncils.gov.uk Fax 020 7934 9777
For non-media enquiries contact: London Councils, 59½ Southwark Street, London SE1 0AL. Tel 020 7934 9999 www.londoncouncils.gov.uk
