Warren Morgan: Government must change council-funding policy

At the end of this month we will put our council budget to the vote, deciding how these and the other 700 services the council provides are paid for. It’s the third one we have presented, and we have worked hard so that once again we will be protecting libraries, children’s centres and nurseries from cuts, but also continuing our work to support rough sleepers, and putting money into new homes and more new ways to tackle litter on our streets.

But the harsh impact of Tory austerity on councils means that again this year millions of pounds have been cut from the money that the Treasury gives us to pay for local services.

By 2020 that funding will have almost completely stopped, meaning the city council will have £100 million less baseline government funding in 2020 than it did in 2011, a really huge loss of income. This is why we, like most city and county councils, whether run by Labour or the Conservatives, are forced to put forward council tax increases of six per cent to try and balance the books.

We continue to cut millions of pounds of costs in contracts and management. Although jobs have gone, we’ve avoided compulsory redundancies, but there’s no doubt our excellent staff are increasingly stretched.

This year’s budget is the best we can possibly make it, but still with very difficult spending reductions, and we simply can’t keep making cuts to our spending, paying more and more for soaring social care costs, and issuing bigger and bigger council tax bills that people just can’t afford.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. We need a change of policy and a change in funding for councils and social care, and that means for our residents a Labour government can’t come soon enough.

Cllr Warren Morgan is the Labour leader of Brighton & Hove City Council