Funding for services provided by councils has borne the brunt of austerity while demand continues to rise. When the chancellor delivers his autumn statement this Wednesday, “more of the same” cannot be an option.
After a 40% reduction in funding during this parliament, our efficiency savings are coming to an end. Further reductions without radical reform will have a detrimental impact on people’s quality of life and will lead to vital services being scaled back or lost altogether. Services such as libraries, leisure centres and road maintenance continue to buckle under the strain of cuts and the ever-rising cost of caring for our growing elderly population. Failure to address this will not only jeopardise other services, but will pass costs on to the NHS, which will have to pick up the pieces if we cannot protect adult social care or provide the services that keep people healthy.
Last week, the Smith commission set out a better deal for Scotland, granting more control over funding and recognising the importance of devolving power down beyond Holyrood. It’s England’s turn now.
There is compelling evidence that taking decisions closer to the people affected achieves better results and saves money. It is vital that the autumn statement sets out a new settlement for England, which puts powers beyond Westminster, and shares out tax and spending across the UK on a fair basis. The people we represent, who look north of the border with envy at the greater control Scots are to get over their everyday lives, will expect nothing less.
Signed by:
Cllr David Sparks, Chair of the Local Government Association
Cllr Gary Porter, leader of the LGA Conservative group
Cllr Jim McMahon, leader of the LGA Labour group
Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, leader of the LGA Liberal Democrat group
Cllr Marianne Overton, leader of the LGA Independent group
Conservative council leaders (40)
Cllr Neil Clarke – Rushcliffe Borough Council
Cllr Tim Taylor – West Somerset Council
Cllr David Renard – Swindon Borough Council
Cllr Roy Nottage – Christchurch Borough Council
Cllr Paul James – Gloucester City Council
Cllr Izzi Seccombe – Warwickshire County Council
Cllr Elaine Atkinson – Poole Borough Council
Cllr John Gilbey – Canterbury City Council
Cllr Donna Jones Portsmouth City Council
Cllr Roger Begy – Rutland Council
Cllr Ian Carr – Test Valley Borough Council
Cllr Adrian Hardman – Worcestershire County Council
Cllr Philip Sanders – West Devon Borough Council
Cllr David Finch – Essex County Council
Cllr Brian Edwards – South Staffordshire District Council
Cllr Lewis Rose – Derbyshire Dales District Council
Cllr Stephen Baines – Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Keith Baker – Wokingham Borough Council
Cllr Michael Wassell – Breckland District Council
Cllr Nigel Ashton – North Somerset Council
Cllr Derrick Haley – Mid Suffolk District Council
Cllr Chris Millar – Daventry District Council
Cllr Gary Porter – South Holland District Council
Cllr James Jamieson – Central Bedfordshire Council
Cllr David Hodge – Surrey County Council
Cllr Peter Bedford – Boston Borough Council
Cllr Ian Hudspeth – Oxfordshire County Council
Cllr Gillian Brown – Arun District Council
Cllr John Griffiths – St Edmundsbury Borough Council
Cllr David Westley – West Lancashire Borough Council
Cllr Tony Jackson – East Herts Council
Cllr Sean Woodward – Fareham Borough Council
Cllr Blake Pain – Harborough District Council
Cllr Howard Rolfe – Uttlesford District Council
Cllr John Beesley – Bournemouth Borough Council
Cllr Tom FitzPatrick – North Norfolk District Council
Cllr Andrew Bowles – Swale Borough Council
Cllr Paul Diviani – East Devon District Council
Cllr Paul Middlebrough – Wychavon District Council
Cllr Martin Tett – Buckinghamshire County Council
Labour council leaders (65)
Cllr Chris Baron – Ashfield District Council
Cllr Simon Greaves – Bassetlaw District Council
Cllr Sir Albert Bore – Birmingham City Council
Cllr Kate Hollern – Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
Cllr Simon Blackburn – Blackpool Council
Cllr Clifford Morris JP – olton Council
Cllr Muhammed Butt – Brent Council
Cllr Sarah Hayward – Camden London Borough Council
Cllr George Adamson – Cannock Chase District Council
Cllr John Burrows – Chesterfield Borough Council
Cllr Alistair Bradley – Chorley Borough Council
Cllr James Alexander – City of York Council
Cllr Tom Beattie – Corby Borough Council
Cllr Peter Lamb – Crawley Borough Council
Cllr Tony Newman – Croydon Council
Cllr Stewart Young – Cumbria County Council
Cllr Bill Dixon MBE – Darlington Borough Council
Cllr Anne Western – Derbyshire County Council
Cllr David Sparks OBE – Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Simon Henig – Durham County Council
Cllr Julian Mott – East Staffordshire Borough Council
Cllr Doug Taylor – Enfield Council
Cllr John Clarke – Gedling Borough Council
Cllr John Burden – Gravesham Borough Council
Mayor Jules Pipe – Hackney London Borough Council
Cllr Rob Polhill – Halton Borough Council
Cllr Claire Kober – Haringey Council
Cllr Jeremy Birch – Hastings Borough Council
Cllr Miles Parkinson – Hyndburn Borough Council
Cllr Richard Watts – Islington Council
Cllr David Sheard – Kirklees Metropolitan Council
Cllr Ron Round JP – Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Lib Peck – Lambeth London Borough Council
Cllr Jennifer Mein – Lancashire County Council
Cllr Keith Wakefield – Leeds City Council
Mayor Sir Steve Bullock – Lewisham London Borough Council
Cllr Hazel Simmons – Luton Borough Council
Sir Richard Leese CBE – Manchester City Council
Cllr Stephen Alambritis – Merton London Borough Council
Cllr Peter Marland – Milton Keynes Council
Cllr Nick Forbes – Newcastle upon Tyne City Council
Cllr Mike Stubbs – Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council
Sir Robin Wales – Newham London Borough Council
Cllr Graham Baxter MBE – North East Derbyshire District Council
Cllr Grant Davey – Northumberland Council
Cllr Brenda Arthur – Norwich City Council
Cllr Alan Rhodes – Nottinghamshire County Council
Cllr Jim McMahon – Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Tudor Evans – Plymouth City Council
Cllr Peter Rankin – Preston City Council
Cllr Jas Athwal – Redbridge London Borough Council
Cllr Alyson Barnes – Rossendale Borough Council
Cllr Darren Cooper – Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Peter Dowd – Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Peter John – Southwark Council
Cllr Barrie Grunewald – St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Sharon Taylor OBE – Stevenage Borough Council
Cllr Bob Cook – Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council
Cllr Mohammed Pervez – Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Cllr Geoffrey Wheeler – Stroud District Council
Cllr Paul Watson – Sunderland City Council
Cllr Peter Box CBE – Wakefield Metropolitan District Council
Cllr Chris Robbins – Waltham Forest London Borough Council
Cllr Terry O’Neill – Warrington Council
Cllr Roger Lawrence – Wolverhampton City Council
Liberal Democrat council leaders (10 + 1 local group leader)
Cllr Dorothy Thornhill – Mayor of Watford
Cllr Brian Greenslade – North Devon District Council
Cllr Keith House – Eastleigh Borough Council
Cllr Sue Derbyshire – Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council
Cllr Stuart Bray – Hinckley and Bosworth District Council
Cllr Ruth Dombey – Sutton Council
Cllr Martin Hunt – Colchester Borough Council
Cllr Ric Pallister – South Somerset District Council
Cllr Steve Jordan – Cheltenham Borough Council
Cllr Ann Shaw – Three Rivers District Council
Cllr Chris White – Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on St Albans District Council
Independent council leader
Cllr Phil Collins – Torridge District Council
The 50s weren’t buttoned up
Having grown up in the 50s, I have always thought the notion that the period was irredeemably repressed, hidebound by convention and awash with bigotry an over-simplification, if only because of The Goon Show and the rise of skiffle, trad jazz and rock’n’roll, all of which meant a lot to me. I was thus pleased to see Rachel Cooke tentatively raise the question, “Is it possible the 1950s were more tolerant?” (Comment), based on the revival of Emlyn Williams’s Accolade, a play from 1950.
This play shows that there were always dissenting voices amid the allegedly stifling conformity. For example, my parents belonged to the Progressive League, a left-leaning libertarian body founded by HG Wells and others in the 1930s, which pressed for reform across an extraordinary range of issues, including homosexual law, penal reform, abortion law, sex education, abolition of capital punishment, opposition to “racialism” and the “colour bar”, all things we take for granted now.
My mother also regularly attended a PL “man/woman relationship” group, which addressed all sorts of sexual and emotional matters, often drawing on psychoanalytic thinking, all at variance with the common assumption that everyone was “buttoned up” in the 50s.
Giles Oakley
London SW14
Bridge is just a theme park
Three cheers for Rowan Moore for exposing the vanity project that is the proposed garden bridge on London’s South Bank (“This garden bridge is nothing but a wasteful blight on the Thames”, Comment). This is a theme park in all but name and with none of the safeguards that such a proposal would normally require.
If we really needed a garden bridge, it should be linked to Kew Gardens, which is suffering from massive government cuts and could benefit and support such an initiative.
Paul Wheeler
London SE10
A case of mild and bitter
Tory MP Damian Green hits the nail on the head when he states that 61% of Conservative voters are optimistic about the immediate future but it’s only 19% for Ukip supporters (“Keep calm and carry on: Tories must stick to their policies, not embrace Ukip”, news commentary). The century-old Conservative coalition has been deconstructed: those who are complacently satisfied with their bonuses and the cut in top rate tax have stayed with the Mark I party, while the embittered losers who blame foreigners, ethnic minorities and gays for their plight have defected to the Mark II party.
Christopher Clayton
Christleton, Cheshire
Passport pandemonium
Your article “Foreign Office condemned for failing Britons in need of help” (News) reports widespread dissatisfaction with the abolition of consular services on which Britons abroad could previously call. It is a good illustration of the government’s commitment to Europe that the large British population in Brussels, the EU’s capital, can no longer obtain a passport on the spot.
The removal of all but emergency services from Brussels has also brought retaliation.
Because Indian citizens can no longer obtain UK visas in Belgium, the Indian embassy here now refuses to issue visas for India to UK passport-holders, obliging them to go to Paris or Amsterdam.
I can imagine that such reprisals will proliferate, to the great inconvenience of British citizens already inconvenienced by their own government.
Richard Condon
Brussels
Scottish wildcats: genetic purity is not a credible aim
We feel we must respond to Kevin McKenna’s inaccurate and scaremongering piece about Scottish wildcats (Comment, last week). Inaccurate press coverage is causing confusion and sadly undermining public support which would otherwise go to Scottish wildcat conservation.
The Scottish Wildcat Conservation action plan is backed by a broad partnership of organisations including the country’s leading experts and practitioners. The steering group includes Scottish Natural Heritage, Cairngorms National Park Authority, National Museums Scotland, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Scottish Gamekeepers Association, The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies – Edinburgh University, National Trust for Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust.
SNH’s work is subject to rigorous peer review, and our commissioned reports on Scottish wildcats have all been subject to independent and thorough scientific review. This includes the recently published evidence supporting selection of wildcat priority areas. We aren’t aware of any scientific information which the Scottish Wildcat Association or Wildcat Haven have published that would challenge the work being taken forward by the partnership.
SNH has consulted widely and taken the views of the broad conservation and land management community into account when agreeing the action plan. There are a minority of individuals, cited in Mr McKenna’s article, who think attempting 100% genetic purity is what matters, whereas the balance of opinion among the 30 organisations signed up to the action plan is that this is not a credible aim.
Domestic cats have been present in Scotland for more than 2,500 years. It’s extremely likely that there will be some domestic cat DNA even in the wildcats in our most remote areas. We’re not aware of any evidence produced by Wildcat Haven or anyone else which would support adopting a purity threshold that excluded wildcats with any level of domestic ancestry. At the other end of the debate, working closely with the partnership are renowned ecologists and naturalists who consider the genetic purity of individual cats is not the only consideration for effective conservation of this iconic species.
As naturalist and author, Sir John Lister-Kaye OBE, states: “The consensus among those of us who have been active field naturalists in the Highlands for many years consider it most unlikely that we will find 100% pure wildcats anywhere. In that case we have to work with the best wildcat stock we have got, based on distinct wildcat appearance and a strong predominance of wildcat genes. The purist approach is much more likely to produce inbreeding problems – the last thing our remaining wildcats need. There has to be common sense from an ecological point of view.”
WJ (Ian) Ross, chairman
Scottish Natural Heritage
Inverness
