Eric Pickles cancels Christmas

Tis the season of goodwill. Though someone forgot to tell Eric Pickles.

He used the wind-down before the festive period to sneak out the news of the additional funding cuts that will be imposed on local authorities in the next two years.

The council where I live in Lewisham will have its funding slashed by over £30 million – almost 10% of its current total. This is on top of already huge cuts in the previous three years.

This in itself is pretty shocking. But it’s all the more galling when you look at it alongside other councils. George Osborne said you should never ‘balance the budget on the backs of the poor.’ But he appears to be doing exactly that.

The cuts are focused on urban areas, on the poorest areas, and on Labour areas. The average reduction to councils in terms of funding per household is £294 in London, three times that of authorities in the rest of the country. Whereas Lewisham’s funding is being slashed by £30 million in the next two years, Brentwood (home to Mr Pickles’ seat) is actually receiving an increase – albeit a modest one – of £13,000. The increases are far larger for Oxfordshire and Cheshire East, which happen to be home to the Prime Minister and Chancellor’s seats. They will see funding increases of £2.2 million and £2.6 million over the period. So much for ‘we are all in this together.’ They’re protecting their own back yards whilst hammering communities they care little about.

Local government itself has born a disproportionate burden of Coalition cuts. Council budgets have been seen as a soft target for raids by the Treasury. Even before this announcement, funding for local government had been reduced by a third in real terms in the Comprehensive Spending Review period, far more than most departments. This has led to what the LGA calls a financial blackhole which will reach a yawning £14.4 billion by 2020.

So why is local government suffering so much more than other areas? In truth it seems we are losing the national argument on local government. Eric Pickles and the right wing press have been relentless in painting local government as bloated, bureaucratic and wasteful. The latest cuts aroused barely a ripple of media coverage. Pickles is a canny political operator who has successfully framed the debate, focusing almost exclusively on eliminating ‘waste’ and on his pet obsession of refuse collection. He literally talks rubbish.

On the other hand we have struggled to make a compelling counter-argument; one that highlights the varied and vital work done by councils in providing services, building communities and shaping places.

In announcing the cuts, Pickles called on Councils to ‘continue cutting waste and making sensible savings.’ But given the scale of these cuts, coming as they do on top of already huge reductions, this is not realistic. The reductions will hurt; services people value will be hit.

Some siren voices on the far left – including in Lewisham – say we should refuse to make any cuts, even if this means the administrator being brought in to enforce even greater cuts with no local accountability. But this would be a shameful abdication of responsibility that would only worsen the impact on the community.

Labour Councils will continue to do their best to manage these huge funding reductions – involving and mobilising the community, and minimising the impact on the most vulnerable. But with local elections coming up in London and elsewhere next year, we need to ensure that people are fully aware of who is responsible for the cuts to their local services – the Tories and their Lib Dem colleagues.

Merry Christmas Eric.

Joe Dromey is Council candidate in New Cross, Lewisham. @Joe_Dromey