John Harris’s excellent article paints a desperate picture of the upcoming financial catastrophe that’s about to explode across the country (One by one, England’s councils are going bankrupt – and nobody in Westminster wants to talk about it, 14 January). If Labour wins the next election, then serious radical thinking is required to fix the mess that 14 years of Tory rule has inflicted. There is always money within the political system, as can be demonstrated by the billions that governments are able to find when required, from the furlough scheme to the funding of wars around the world and vanity projects such as HS2.
As Harris notes, not all the blame should be placed at the government’s door. Council leaders are responsible for managing their funding, and there are numerous cases of mismanagement that have resulted in money being wasted.
But the fact that George Osborne and David Cameron have no accountability for the results of their austerity project goes to show how the Westminster bubble is alien to the rest of the country. Keir Starmer needs to change this.
The other factor not mentioned within Harris’s article is Brexit. EU funding, often used for local infrastructure projects, has gone, and our crumbling roads, schools and high streets bear witness to this.
Stuart Finegan
Lewes, East Sussex
• The local free newspaper here in Wirral regularly throws up complaints from residents about Wirral council failing to fund this or wasting money on that. I have long complained to family and friends that a major element of blame for this hollowing out of council resources has been the swingeing cuts in central government funding.
John Harris quotes reductions of 40% in central government funding, but a look at Hansard from 8 February 2022 reveals that the extent of the damage caused since the Conservatives came to power 14 years ago is far greater than that. A discussion in the Commons on that date, involving the excellent Wirral West MP, Margaret Greenwood, together with her colleagues Mick Whitley, Angela Eagle and others, revealed that the £266m received by Wirral council in 2010 from central government had shrunk to just £40m in 2020. Unbelievably, reductions were even greater for Liverpool City, Sefton and St Helens. Thank you, John, for exposing the real reason for council bankruptcies.
Phil Thomas
Thingwall, Merseyside
• The sound of John Harris hitting the nail on the head when it comes to who’s responsible for council bankruptcies across the UK rebounds from government cloth ears, and that’s before we take into account the grotesque side issue of “generous” businesses stepping in when councils can’t afford to maintain services. Planning, for instance, has become prey to profiteers who offer much-needed housing, then move the goalposts when they’ve got a foot in the door.
In Bristol, two building projects are stark evidence of this process. While the council’s policy on population density is designed to support manageable communities, both these projects present buy-to-let ghettoes at three and four times the limit that it specifies, with no increase in health provision or public services, and affordable housing at a miserable 10%.
One of these projects is nearing completion, locally acknowledged as an architectural and social catastrophe, while the other would plonk more than 800 high-rise rental apartments in a low-rise community. Where do we go from here? I’d say stand up for local democracy, bite greed on the backside, and put community first, whatever the cost.
Tony Rowlands
Bristol
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