The Real Face of the Cuts

Income Inequality will hit hard

Following on from conversations on our local government grant with a number of colleagues elsewhere in the UK.

In the case of Medway, the cut to our Local Government Grant will be approaching £12 million this year. With the prospect of it reducing by another £20 million over the three years that follow. A truly shameful sum given the groans of Conservatives about floor damping.

This cut is not just floor damping. It is removing the floor from under the feet of hard pressed Medway people.

What Tories overlook, and evidently so in Medway because it is never discused, is the significant variations of alternate income between Councils. Tories make basic assumption that income streams from Council tax and other sources are the same in every area.

They assume a level playing field where one does not exist.

For some councils, like Westminster for example, the grant from government is a fairly small proportion of the their overall income. This is true even in the North, for York council the grant is only about 40% of their total income. For Barnsley it is almost 80%.

To mitigate the drop in grant councils like these will have options. Increasing parking charges in Westminster, for example, by a modest sum will replace the loss they are expecting. In Medway the punitive increases in fines from CCTV cars and traffic fines, under the name of enforcement will be key.

What about the other options for increasing our income? Well planning fees are dropping, because nobody can afford to build, this is a national problem for all councils. One of the biggest income generators are care packages, but we are having to outsource more and more which takes them away and again, increases here would target the most vulnerable in society directly. Across the whole range of potential income streams, weaker economy areas just don't have the options to available to others.

There is council tax of course which is being frozen. But look at its impacts; In Surrey, the council are facing a cut of around £13 million in grant next year. A 2.5% increase in council tax on the properties in leafy Surrey would bring in around.. er.. £13 million to the council. Handy. In Medway, which has significant numbers of poorer housing and far more differentiation an increase in tax does not generate revenues like this.

In the end poorer areas including Medway will have very little prospect of dealing with this massive loss of finance by finding other money to invest in services. We only have one real option. We can only spend tens of millions less. Which will mean less services, less jobs, less council.

Pickles says, only 'lazy' councils will cut services. He couldn't be further from the truth. Only wealthy councils will be able to lose this much money and not cut jobs and services.

Hard pressed councils in hard pressed areas, who have to get the most from every penny and work hard to get it, will be the ones who have to cut the most.

Another concern is the suggestion that business rates ought to be repatriated to the areas they came from. The system where the wealthy areas who can charge what they like, help to support the areas where business needs to be encouraged with low rates, should be dropped? Once again the money flows to wealthy areas and away from the areas of greatest need.

If this happens, Councils in the South East may have to repatriate money to London as we are overwhelmingly reliant on the capital for jobs.

The weak are an easy target for the Conservatives. Medway will suffer not only because of the cut in grant but because when compared with leafy Tory shire areas we do not have the same measures to increase income to mitigate cuts.

Formula Grant cut unfair on Medway

More details are emerging from the Local Government Settlement grant for Medway Council today as Council chiefs estimate they have lost £12 million from the government settlement.

Cumulatively over two years the budget will drop from £98m to £86m in 2011/12 and from £86m to £78m in 2012/13.

This is a drop of £32 million cumulative over two years based on the 2010/11 numbers. That represents currently one third of the Medway Council budget.

Despite double-accounting makes it now almost certain that the leaked 3.7% cut number released by the government is almost certainly spurious and for media consumption.

The government have removed national grants and added them to local government budgets and have double accounted for health and social services which were budgets allocated to the NHS.

This settlement is smoke and mirrors designed to deceive the electorate.

There is still no comment from Conservative HQ on the Area Based Grant which many Conservatives whinged about whilst receiving year-on-year increases in grant from 2003. Those same people have been silent today as the true extent of duplicity has set in. The government they leafletted and campaign for, has just taken away the hard earned money of Medway citizens and have not only failed to give it to the poorest, but instead have handed it to the richest.

Conservative values; help the rich, hurt the middle class.

Government cost-cutting is expected to hit family services in deprived parts of Medway. The Conservatives have no concept of fairness and have given the smallest reductions in grant to safe Conservative shire seats. It is gerrymandering and it is overt/

It is also likely to wipe out low-key efforts to integrate eastern Europeans into the community which will hurt areas in Luton & Wayfield which have major issues with integration.

Even Tory Council deputy leader Cllr Alan Jarrett admitted that "This is not to Medway's benefit," which is code for Medway being legged over by the Conservative government.

A new budget has to be approved in late February but if you live in any of the inner city wards in Medway from Gillingham, Twydall, Chatham, Lordswood, Rainham, Rochester or Strood, you will be viciously hurt by these cuts.

Primary School Results Shame

Pupils protesting against Medway Tory cuts to Primary Schools

An indictment of close to a decade of Conservative control of the Local Education Authority has seen Medway slide to the bottom of the Primary School league tables in England and Wales

Today's results are a damning indictment on the Conservative administration and the state of education in Medway and points to a failure of the LEA to adequately support poor performing schools to ensure they improve there performance.

Almost a third of our pupils are failing to achieve the results they deserve despite years of per pupil funding increases from government.

It is fair to say that Medway has consistently performed poorly and it would be remiss not to point out that a number of individual primary schools have improved. However, the story for many remains static; whilst the good schools continue to perform the poor schools are not adequately supported.

Medway should not occupy a position close to the bottom of the table because taken as a whole, we are a wealthier demographic than a number of those areas that perform better. This makes the poor result all the more damning, because on average our pupils should have more opportunity.

There are too many primary schools in Medway that are failing and the pace of improvement needs to quicken. Unfortunately, given Tory cuts to education budgets this remains a risk. We start from the bottom of the hill with a strong headwind and icy slopes.

After the shambles of the Primary School re-organisation last year, this points to an oversight failure by Conservatives over the strategic direction of education in Medway. Next year, we need a change of focus away from performing schools who can manage themselves, onto the most disadvantaged and poor performing schools. We need Councillors who get education.

The authorities listed are ranked firstly on the percentage of pupils attaining the government benchmark of Level 4 in both their maths and English SATS. The average point score in the national curriculum tests, out of a maximum of 33, is then used as a tie-break. Medway scored 26.8 points which is way below the average.

Many educational psychologists believe that future education achievement is overwhelmingly impacted by what is termed 'early intervention'. It is clear we are failing too many at the earliest points in their lives.

Luton & Wayfield ward saw a number of poor performing schools that are way below the average. Breaking down statistics on free school meals, ESOL and ward demographics and it is clear that not only are these schools not being given adequate support but with future cuts in the EMA and tuition fee hikes, the Conservatives are damning an entire generation of students from the area to failure.

That is why residents next year must oppose Conservative cuts because as we can see they skew resource away from areas with most need to wealthier areas.

It is true though that a quarter of schools boycotted the SATS tests this year, and where there is not enough data to give an accurate figure, government statisticians have not published averages. The data therefore is open to error but

Our position on the table is appalling and we need a renewed focus and vigour on improving those schools so that our future generations are not strangled of opportunity from their earliest years

Local Government cuts

Medway families, the elderly and the vulnerable are targeted the hardest by the Conservative cuts in local government funding. We will suffer a 3.5% cut in funding

The Tories have targeted the middle class for their cuts in an attempt to gerrymander resources to safe Tory seats.

Whilst Medway will have to cut 3.5%. Tory safer seats are given priorities over our towns. Dorset gets a 0.25% increase in funding and Windsor and Maidenhead, Poole, West Sussex, Wokingham, Richmond upon Thames and Buckinghamshire all get cuts of 1% or below.

This is blatant gerrymandering of funding by the Conservative Party against the people of Medway.

The council settlement came amid a flurry of funding announcements today as the government was set to bury bad news

Cuts also include

• Each of the 43 England and Wales police forces will see a 5.1% cut in funding next year and a 6.7% reduction in 2012-13. This is a direct attack on bobbies on the beat and will lead to a rise in crime across Medway.

Instead Tories want to spend millions on elected police commissioners which will see funding gerrymandered away from Medway to Tory-shire seats in mid-Kent.

• Next year's budget of £834m for highways maintenance will reduce to £707m by 2014-15 – a 15% drop in spending on road repairs.

Instead Tories will now cut funding for residential road repairs which will leave your road pot-holed. Coupled with Medway Conservative waste on the Chatham two-way system which cost £2.5m this is a slap in the face to the motorist.

•The education budget for England for next year is revealed, including the new "pupil premium". However, the education department confirmed it could no longer deliver its promise of a 0.1% real-terms year-on-year increase after the Office for Budget Responsibility revised the inflation figures up, meaning that the £3.6bn cash increase would now mean a marginal cut in budgets.

Medway is about to feel the brunt of Tory cuts.

Whilst safe Tory areas suffer, the poorest areas and Medway suffer under this government.

Liar Liar

Tory Traffic Chaos in Rochester

The state of our towns road system is now beyond a joke to Council tax payers and residents.

Anyone who has had to travel from one end of Medway from another will now take 30 minutes to an hour to complete a journey that should take 15 minutes.

Residents should squarely blame Conservative Councillors because it is the current administration in Gun Wharf that has so monumentally failed to manage this.

Medway residents have now had four years of unmitigated road chaos which has been monumentally mismanaged by Tories. They have watched Medway Conservatives spend £2.5m on a road system in Chatham which doesn't work (because no one is following the taxi/bus only route rules) and have suffered the infamy of gas works on Gun Road which literally cut off Chatham from Gillingham for 2 months.

The current works on Corporation Street, Rochester are causing absolute chaos. I say absolute chaos because it is an unmitigated shambles of monumental proportions. Thousands upon thousands of drivers are left for 30 minutes to an hour stuck in traffic. The entire system has collapsed and it is like an urban jungle. We have ambulances stuck, police stuck and with the level of traffic, the bus system must be suffering unmanageable delays.

People do not mind road works or improvements to the road system. They do mind un-coordinated and unnecessary works which prolong misery and which damage local business and trade, and therefore risk jobs.

These road works in Rochester are necessary. However, to wait in queues only to see no one working on a stretch of road which is a core junction in the entire Medway road-system is laughable. Or indeed, resignable if I were the Tory Councillor in charge.

It simply beggars belief that the Conservatives can just ignore this. They just inhabit a different planet then those who have to use the roads on a daily basis.

Inner city Rochester and Chatham have seen a welcome influx of tourists over the last four weeks for the Dickens Festival and the Castle market which has been a success. The problem is that someone in the Medway Conservative administration sanctioned massive works on the Corporation Street at the same time. Surely, one department should be speaking with another. This should have been rubber stamped for January not December (a core trading month) and it should have been 24 hour, 7 days a week works.

Today, despite the gridlock there were no workmen on the works at all. So not only was there absolute paralysis but it seems the lights have been left on automatic and the works left until Monday.

The same old tired excuses get trotted out about spending the money before the budget runs out, but that is total rubbish. Councillors and Council officers can pick a time for road works and they can demand it be undertaken within a longer time frame.

It may be more expensive to complete the works overnight and into weekends but given the strategic importance of that junction, that should have been considered as a natural response.

The current works in Rochester even make the traffic chaos in Chatham look well managed and that remains a £2.5m waste of money if ever there was one.

The expensive joke (because you as council tax payers are paying) however is that the Conservative administration, and it is Tory Councillors directly, have not appropriately scrutinised roadworks at all.

Despite the opposition complaining for years that important works should be undertaken at an appropriate time and if in a strategic location, very quickly. Despite residents, press and opposition screaming for years that we demand a better process for road improvements, they are all totally ignored.

We are seeing the same mismanagement now that we saw years ago. The same mistakes repeated, never a lesson learned.

It is Medway residents that are once again suffering because of this bungling administrations incompetence.

It is time for Tories to start to get a grip on traffic. They have had four years to manage this properly and they have failed every single time.

New management is required. Vote Labour in May for competence