North East councillors accuse government of rural cash cuts
County councillors have accused the government of reducing funds for rural services.In November, the government confirmed it was "repurposing" the rural services delivery grant as it "does not properly assess rural need".But Northumberland Conservative councillor Nick Oliver said the grant, worth £3.5m to the county in recent years, was "taken away overnight".Liz Twist, Labour MP for Blaydon and Consett, claimed local government funding had increased.
The rural services delivery grant provided funding to authorities in recognition of the possible additional costs of delivering services in sparsely populated areas.
Speaking on BBC Politics North, Oliver highlighted that pressures on councils were continuing to build."I've been a councillor for almost eight years now and this year feels worse than any other year since I started," he said."We've had the rural services grant just taken away overnight, no warning whatsoever."In rural areas, it costs more to deliver council services. "That rural services grant is being replaced with this recovery grant and, guess what, Northumberland is the only council in the North East that isn't getting any recovery grant."It's also the only Conservative council."
Labour MP Twist rejected any suggestion this was a party political decision and defended the government's action on council tax.She said: "We have increased local government funding by £5bn this year and we've invested in additional things like homelessness funds and other specific grants."We do recognise the pressure local government's under, in fact I think there was actually a lot of consensus about the fact that local government has been hammered over the last 10-12 years so we're looking to recover from that."This week many authorities announced rises in council tax, with authorities across the North East opting for just under 5%.
Speaking on behalf of Reform UK, Durham County Councillor Rob Potts said: "We were given £48m in County Durham only then to find out at the same time we lost £49.8m of our transport budget."We make the cuts that we have to and it may be that we have to make further cuts in the future, but unfortunately the money that we were given is nowhere near the money that we need."We were promised that there would be no increases in council taxes, only to receive an amount of money which wasn't enough not to raise council taxes."
Twist also rejected this and said the Labour administration was committed to helping councils and taxpayers plan for future financial changes.She added: "This is a one-year settlement of course."We've come in midway through the financial year, we've had to produce for this year and what we're looking at for the future is longer term funding settlements, multi-year settlements, so that people know what they're getting."
BBC Politics North airs on BBC One on Sundays at 10:00GMT. Catch up with the latest episodes on BBC iPlayer.
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