Liz McInnes demands fairer funding for Council in the Budget

Liz McInnes MP

Liz McInnes, MP for Heywood and Middleton and Shadow Minister for Local Government, has called on the Chancellor to use the budget in March to make sure Rochdale Borough Council gets a fairer funding deal after new figures revealed the "unfairness of the Tory Government’s cuts."

New research shows that in the time since the Conservative government came to power in 2010 and up to the year 2020, Rochdale Council will have lost more than £54 million in spending power – that’s almost £600 per household. Meanwhile, wealthier areas will see an increase in spending after George Osborne handed hundreds of millions of pounds to wealthy Tory councils ahead of this May’s council elections.

Ms McInnes said: “This research proves what many people have known for a long time – that the Conservative government are protecting their own councils and are cutting many northern, Labour-run councils to the bone. Areas like wealthy, Tory South Cambridgeshire will actually see an increase of £14 per household in their spending power while Rochdale Council suffers yet more unfair cuts. These spending power figures are the government’s preferred way of calculating cuts, and they are bad enough - but the actual cuts are almost £200million since 2010.

“Government ministers are fond of saying that they will protect funding, but the facts show this is nothing more than empty words and broken promises. This research is based on the government’s own preferred figures and clearly shows they are cutting harder than ever but protecting the wealthiest.”

Rochdale Council Leader Councillor Richard Farnell said: “These massive reductions to Rochdale's spending power have forced £200 million of cuts to local services because of a combination of government grant cuts and unfunded extra demand for caring for the elderly. If you're not a Tory council, you're not a priority for this government. They pump millions extra into well off areas like Sussex and Oxfordshire, while high demand and high needs councils in the north, like Rochdale, face huge cuts. That is grotesquely unfair resulting in huge unmet needs and poorer public services.”