Latest news with #Labour-controlled
Rhyl Journal
a day ago
- Business
- Rhyl Journal
Families angry over £7k a year cross-border care funding gap
Relatives spoke out after learning Denbighshire County Council pays £7,000 a year less per person towards providing care in a care home than their counterparts a short hop across the water in Conwy. One elderly couple caught up in the postcode lottery of funding are Leslie and Megan Smallwood. Leslie, 90, a retired quantity surveyor, and Megan, 86, a former maths teacher, live at The Old Deanery Care Home in St Asaph. They moved there in February last year from their family home at Caerwys in Flintshire, with that property now up for sale. Their daughter Yvonne Harding, a community nurse who lives in Heswall on the Wirral, said: 'Having this difference in fees from one council to another is fundamentally unfair. MORE NEWS: 'It seems to me Conwy are valuing the care sector, and I applaud that. 'We can't fault the home in its care, but it's about meeting the true cost of that care.' Rosemary Holland's brother Andrew Truelove, 61, is a resident at St David's Residential Home in Rhyl. Her father John Truelove had been a resident at the home until his death in September last year. Rosemary, who lives in Conwy, used to work in the care sector and said she has huge concerns about the financial challenges the industry was facing. She urged Denbighshire County Council to at least match the fees paid by Conwy County Borough Council. She said that would ensure all care home residents received an equal level of care – and would stop staff leaving homes in Denbighshire for better pay at care homes across the river in Conwy. Rosemary said: 'I just feel that Denbighshire needs to sort themselves out and pay the extra. 'They need to, because what Denbighshire is doing is affecting the residents. 'I have real concerns about the way social services in Denbighshire is working with residents, because it feels like they are not working for the residents, they are working to try to keep costs down.' The span of the Grade II listed Foryd Bridge can mean a huge difference in funding for care homes on opposite banks of the mouth of the River Clwyd. Care Forum Wales also hit out describing the funding gap as a 'shameful disparity is grossly unjust because it discriminates against older vulnerable people.' Thea Brain, North Wales Policy Advisor for CFW, said: 'This is about the entitlement of the individual. Why is someone who lives in Conwy worth more than someone who lives in Denbighshire? 'When you press this issue with the people at Denbighshire County Council they give very vague answers pointing to the differences in settlement for each local authority but that doesn't account for these huge differences in the figures. 'When you look into this you are left with the unacceptable conclusion that this is just a matter of political priority.' CFW Chair Mario Kreft said: 'It's astonishing that a Labour-controlled council like Denbighshire is ignoring Welsh Labour Government advice and is promoting such inequality in Wales. 'Those making these decisions should consider positions.' Denbighshire County Council funds about 382 placements across 85 care homes. The total projected cost for older people's residential and nursing care during 2025/26 is £15.2 million. A spokesperson for Denbighshire County Council said: "In setting its 2025/2026 care fees, Denbighshire County Council consulted with care providers across the county and took into consideration the main concerns raised, which were the increase in Real Living Wage and the impact of the changes to National Insurance. Each Local Authority has a different funding settlement and therefore has to strike a very delicate balance of navigating challenging financial constraints and ensuring that we are maintaining a sustainable future for the care sector in Denbighshire. "Denbighshire currently funds approximately 382 placements across 85 care homes. The total projected cost for older people's residential and nursing care during 2025/26 is £15.2 million. "With social care making up nearly a third of the average Council Tax bill in Denbighshire, it is vital that we take a fair and sustainable approach to funding care within Denbighshire."
New Statesman
6 days ago
- General
- New Statesman
Why is Birmingham leading Britain's child poverty spiral?
Photo by Christopher Furlong / Getty Images To truly understand the impact of child poverty in Birmingham, the best place to go is Ladywood. Sitting to the west of the city centre, research from 2008 identified this area as having the highest percentage of children who live in poverty of any parliamentary constituency. A newspaper report from the time depicts the situation on the ground for locals: 'I'd rather starve than let them go hungry,' a father who was out of work said of his girlfriend and their 12-month-old daughter. 'We might be short of money, but we're not short of love.' The headline of the piece, outlining the poverty the city's young people were growing up in, is simple and devastating: 'A poor start'. More than 16 years later, children living in Ladywood are still experiencing a poor start to life. It remains the constituency with the highest levels of child poverty in Britain: 55 per cent of its youth live in deprivation (after housing costs are accounted for), according to a 2025 report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). The situation in Ladywood is a microcosm of a wider crisis of child poverty across Birmingham. Ladywood and its neighbouring constituencies – Hall Green and Moseley, 55 per cent; Yardley, 53 per cent; Perry Barr, 53 per cent; and Hodge Hill and Solihull North, 51 per cent – account for five of the top ten areas affected by this issue. In excess of 100,000 children across the city are living in poverty. Birmingham itself is at the apex of a wider trend of rising child poverty across the country in recent years. According to the same research by the JRF, around three in ten children growing up in the UK live in poverty. As the scourge of child poverty has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, so has the need for third sector organisations to provide localised support. 'The pandemic hadn't helped the situation,' said Alice Bath, operational manager at the Family Action charity and a born-and-bred Brummie. Family Action runs an Early Help Programme for families in Ladywood and Perry Barr. 'Even though we're out of it, we're still facing the mop-up of the [underlying] issues that it presented,' Bath said. Children in Birmingham, Bath told me, are contending with 'exponential' increases of food insecurity, decaying dental health, respiratory conditions, obesity and housing instability. Despite the best efforts of Bath and her colleagues across the third sector, there is now a quiet acceptance of a deprived status quo among the city's youth: 'It's become a way of life and a way of being.' What isn't helping the fight against child poverty in Birmingham is the dire financial situation of its council. Birmingham City Council effectively declared itself bankrupt in September 2023. To claw back funding, government- appointed commissioners have pencilled in over £300m of cuts across the following two years in the Labour-controlled council. The cuts reportedly include up to £112m worth of spending reductions and savings in the council's early help and youth services. That includes axing £8m worth of funding that is paid by the Birmingham Voluntary Services Council to ten local charities – including Bath's Family Action – that put on vital services for children and families across the city. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe 'Birmingham was massively hit by the decline in the manufacturing base of the city,' Martin Brooks, who has served on Birmingham City Council for 20 years, told me. The region was once famous for its production of cars, metals and Cadbury's chocolates. Brooks added: 'We were losing jobs in the Thatcher years not by the hundreds or thousands, but by the tens of thousands. Those years [of deindustrialisation] had a massive effect on poverty within the city.' When accounting for the exponential levels of child poverty today, the blame is largely placed on the effects of the 2008 financial crash and Conservative-induced austerity of the 2010s. 'The poor governance of the city has [also] had some effect on where we are today,' said Brooks, who quit the Labour Party last December. (He now stands as an independent councillor.) Brooks resigned over the fresh cuts his former Labour council colleagues have approved, which will 'have a devastating effect on the life chances of our young people in this, the youngest of European cities,' he said at the time. Locals are desperately searching for answers from their council. Upon visiting the local authority's HQ – a grand, Victorian era Grade II-listed building – on a bright spring morning, looking for a council cabinet member to interview, I was told they were unavailable. They were 'busy dealing with the bin situation,' a member of staff told me. The strikes have ensured the city stays top of the headlines – albeit for the wrong reasons. The politicians representing Birmingham on a local and national level are all too aware of the challenges facing their younger constituents. 'We made good progress until austerity in addressing some of those issues,' Richard Parker, the Labour Mayor of the West Midlands, told me over tea when we met in the city. 'The Tory government took £1bn out of the spending power of the city council, and it's still living with the impact of those cuts. That £1bn is further damage to some of our poorest communities in the most vulnerable parts of the region.' Parker's Conservative predecessor, Andy Street, who I met in the city centre a few weeks later, acknowledged that he and other political leaders 'did not change [the] map of deprivation'. There is broad political alignment on how the issue can be tackled in the medium-to-long term: increased housebuilding (with a particular focus on social housing), inward investment for better jobs in the region and improved education and skills pathways to help locals capitalise on them. But in the immediate term, hordes of children in the city will remain impoverished. 'I think the two-child benefit cap limit has to change,' Liam Byrne, the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, and a former cabinet minister during the last Labour government, told me when we met in Westminster recently. Should the cap (which prevents parents from claiming Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit for a third, or any subsequent child, born after April 2017) be lifted, around 17,000 families in Birmingham would be able to receive additional financial support, which can currently cost a family household up to £3,455 a year. 'Family incomes need to go up,' Byrne added, 'that's why [lifting] the two-child limit is so important.' Birmingham is facing a 'child poverty emergency'. A 2024 campaign by local outlet Birmingham Live outlines the severity of the situation. No fewer than 46 per cent of the city's children are impoverished (up from 27 per cent in 2015); twice the national average. Two in three (66 per cent of) children living in poverty come from a working family. Over 10,000 children live in temporary accommodation – a record number. Healthwise, compared to the national average, children are: 1.8 times more likely to die in infancy, and as likely to be hospitalised for asthma; 1.3 times more likely to have a low birth weight, and as likely to die in childhood; and are 1.2 times more likely to be obese at ten years old. Child poverty in Birmingham is also being particularly felt on the city's large south Asian cohort: in all but one of the ten most afflicted wards, the largest demographic of residents come from Asian and Asian-British backgrounds. Although some feel optimistic about the government's upcoming Child Poverty Strategy– due to be outlined in the spring – the benefits it might bring to Birmingham remain unclear. The council cuts only exacerbate fears. As they were through austerity, the pandemic and now, those working in the third sector in Birmingham (and across the UK more widely) – largely made up of locals, many of whom are volunteers – will continue to be a vital safety net for society's most vulnerable. 'I could moan and groan, but it's not going to change things,' Family Action's Bath said of the council cuts, while looking towards the future of its service in Perry Barr and Ladywood. 'It's about having a positive mindset,' Bath added. 'It's about being solution-focused and saying, 'What can I control? And how can I make a difference to support children and families?' It's about keeping hold of why we come to work in the morning and what our core mission and values are about.' This article first appeared in our Spotlight on Child Poverty supplement, of 23 May 2025, guest edited by Gordon Brown. Related
South Wales Argus
16-05-2025
- Politics
- South Wales Argus
Welsh Labour are taking people for granted says this reader
With both parties losing control of councils, and mayoral elections in areas that had a long tradition of voting for the two legacy parties. Such is Labour's disconnect from working people's values and traditions, Labour saw mayoral candidates finish fourth in Hull and East Yorkshire and third in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, whilst suffering double-digit seat losses in once Labour-controlled County Durham, Lancashire and Northumberland. All former Labour strong holds. Labour had been in control of County Durham since 1925, a post-industrial area that is very similar to the south Wales Valleys. Next year Wales will go to the polls, where Labour will be trying to defend 26 years of abject failure all supported by the Welsh nationalists. The Welsh economy has been destroyed by bureaucracy and high taxes resulting in 25 years of economic decline and stagnation, delivering an education and health service ranked the worst in the UK. Ms Morgan our second leader to be appointed by Labour with no public vote is in full panic mode, becoming more irrational by the day. First denial then a flurry of contradictory statements, ignoring the fact that Labour has been in power for 26 years. Working class people are fed up of being taken for granted, fed up of being talked down to by labour politicians who have never worked in the real world, and have nothing in common with ordinary people. labour academic technocratic class have betrayed working people. In 2026, the people of Wales, like the people of County Durham, will have an opportunity to change all that. Mr M Thomas, Blackwood
Scotsman
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Scotsman
Councillor steers clear of commitment to congestion charge
Last Saturday this paper reported under the headline, Congestion charge should be considered again says city chief, that this issue was once more on the agenda. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It reported that the city's transport convener, Labour councillor Stephen Jenkinson, said that he thought that it was something that the city council 'should consider looking at' when asked about the prospect of a congestion charge being introduced in Edinburgh at a meeting organised by the Lothian cycling campaign group, Spokes. Given that he was addressing a meeting of cycling enthusiasts he probably wanted to tell them something that they were happy to hear, but his words seem to be carefully chosen so as not to antagonise his audience, but were hardly a wholehearted commitment to strive for the charge's introduction. So, no need for motorists to concern themselves – yet! A proposal for a congestion charge was put to a referendum in Edinburgh in February 2005 – and defeated Of course Councillor Jenkinson has every right to exercise a bit of caution here, after all, when this was put to Edinburgh residents back in 2005 in a local referendum it was rejected by a whopping 74 per cent of those that responded. Hardly the ringing endorsement of the proposal that the Labour-run council was looking for. Indeed that particular congestion charge proposed an 'outer' and an 'inner' ring with two separate charges. This provoked Labour-controlled councils in the Lothians to threaten court action against Edinburgh's Labour administration if the proposal was ever introduced. They did so in defence of their residents who would be charged £2 for driving into the city. So, to say it was mired in controversy would be an understatement. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Councillor Jenkinson steered clear of giving an outright commitment to introduce a congestion charge for Edinburgh when he said that: 'I think that it is going to be challenging. We really need the Scottish Government to help us.' He thereby deftly passed the buck and adroitly swerved a potential pothole! Backing him up, council official Deborah Paton told the meeting that the Scottish Government should take the lead and that 'leaving it to local authorities to do it on a local level is a real struggle and potentially is a little bit divisive'. If the experience of 2005 is anything to go by, this also qualifies as an understatement, but one worth making, nevertheless. So, it is obvious that after this understandable exercise in hand washing, the potential battleground for the introduction of a congestion charge is situated at Holyrood rather than up in the High Street. However, it will be interesting to see which, if any, political party (apart from the Greens) includes the introduction of a congestion charge in its manifesto for next May's Scottish Parliament elections. Conservative MSP, Sue Webber, has been leading her party's charge to 'end the war against Scotland's motorists'. An accusation which other parties deny but is unlikely to go away. If the issue ever raises its head in the debating chamber at Holyrood, Sue will get her chance to vent her spleen (again) and outline her arguments against what she sees as unwarranted attacks on the country's drivers. As a bus user, a pedestrian and a driver I'll be interested to see how all this pans out, but given the potential pitfalls associated with major transport charging initiatives it would take some bold decisions if anything was to change anytime soon. Watch this space!
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Reform considers legal challenges against asylum hotels
Reform UK could take the government to court to prevent migrants being housed in areas where it now controls the local council, party chairman Zia Yusuf told the BBC. Yusuf said his party had pledged to "resist" housing asylum seekers in Reform-controlled areas and it would use "every instrument of power available", including judicial reviews, to fulfil its pledge. The Home Office is responsible for housing adult asylum seekers and while councils can object, they have little power to stop it. Reform gained more than 600 seats and took control of 10 local authorities in Thursday's local elections. Asked how Reform could fulfil its pledge to voters, given that contracts to house asylum seekers in hotels were drawn up between the Home Office and accommodation providers, Yusuf said the party was "realistic" about the challenge. "The levers of power at a local level pale in comparison to the levers of power at Westminster," he told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. But he said "those levers of power will be pulled with all our might by Reform councillors," adding: "There are things you can do, there are judicial reviews, there are injunctions... things around planning, budget allocation." He told Laura Kuenssberg: "A lot of these hotels... you suddenly turn them into something else which is essentially a hostel that falls foul of any number of regulations - that's what our teams of lawyers are exploring at the moment." Asked if Reform UK's policy was to house migrants in tents, as the party's newly elected Greater Lincolnshire mayor Dame Andrea Jenkyns suggested, Yusuf said: "That's what France does." He added: "We will be publishing a plan to deport everybody who is currently in this country illegally in our first term of government. "We will publish that plan in the coming weeks and you'll see the full detail." In 2021, Labour-controlled Coventry City Council and six other local authorities in the West Midlands took legal action against the Home Office over its asylum-seeker dispersal policy. The policy involves moving asylum seekers to different council areas across the country to help spread the cost of supporting them. But the legal action, known as a judicial review, was withdrawn after the Home Office promised "a new, fairer asylum dispersal system". The government says it is determined to end the use of asylum hotels over time and cut the "unacceptably high" costs of accommodation. But figures from March show almost 40,000 migrants are still housed in hotels. In his Laura Kuenssberg interview, Zia Yusuf also said that Reform councillors "will cut waste", and will target spending on diversity and inclusion initiatives. Challenged on how much money this would save, he said places like Lincolnshire County Council, which Reform won control of from the Conservatives, "do spend considerable money on DEI initiatives". He said Reform UK will "send teams in, task forces" and that "we're now going to have access to the contracts and we're going to make these changes." Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Reform had done well in Thursday's polls because Nigel Farage was "expressing the feeling of frustration that a lot of people around the country are feeling". But she said he does not have a record in government and "now he is going to be running some councils - we'll see how that goes". Asked if Farage could be the next prime minister, she said "anything is feasible", noting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had won re-election this week after trailing in the polls. But she added: "My job is to make sure that he [Farage] does not become prime minister because he does not have the answers to the problems the country is facing." Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he now treats Reform UK as a "serious opposition force". He told Sky News: "It's not yet clear whether at the next general election it will be Reform or the Conservatives that are Labour's main challengers, but we've got to take that threat seriously." "In that spirit, I think Reform does deserve more air time and scrutiny of their policies." What might Reform do with its newly-won power? Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to keep up with the inner workings of Westminster and beyond.
