Why does Manchester get £250m more than Bradford from the Goverment?

Bradford - less deserving than Manchester

A Labour candidate in Manchester – bearing the delightfully working class name of Grace Fletcher-Hackwood – has penned a sweet little letter to the Prime Minister about the terrible things happening to the City. Now, while I find that writing letters to the Prime Minister a mostly futile exercise, I couldn’t help be grimace at Grace’s jeremiad.

First let's get one thing straight: Manchester's local government settlement has been cut by 21%. The Transition Grant you mentioned is just that – we only get it for one year. Manchester City Council's total government grant for 2012-13, including the funding for the council tax freeze, and including the NHS funding, will be £383.6m, down from £485.8m in 2010-11. That is a cut of 21%. Don't let Nick Clegg do your maths for you, Prime Minister: you know he can't count above thirty.

Now I’m guessing that Grace is a little cross but this constant moaning about how hard done by Manchester is...well, it is beginning to annoy me because the City has been rather feather=bedded in recent times. So here, for Grace’s benefit, are a few facts:

  

1.       Manchester’s per capita grant from the Government is 56% higher than the per capita grant in Bradford. And I do hope that Grace isn’t going to suggest that Bradford is much less deprived than Manchester? 

2.       Manchester also sets a higher level of Council Tax than Bradford – Band C in my fine city is £1135.33 whereas it is £1179.54 in Manchester. 

3.       Given that the populations of the two cities are pretty much identical that means Manchester has 60%  - that’s right SIXTY PER CENT – more to spend on its citizens than does Bradford

It’s true that Bradford’s Labour-led council has made cuts of around £56m – including some carefully targeted and spiteful cuts directed at the rural parts of the City – but there has not been the need for the drastic cuts Manchester seems to be making to its frontline services.

What I’d like to know – maybe Grace can help me out – is just how Manchester spends all that extra cash it gets? And if you’re asking how much extra we’re talking about, the answer is £245.4m. That’s right folks Manchester gets nearly £250m more from the Government than does Bradford.

That can’t be right can it?

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An approaching unintended consequence?

As part of a blizzard of populist (and in many cases welcome) announcements, the wonderful Eric Pickles has call on councils to cut down on street clutter:

"Our streets are losing their English character. We are being overrun by scruffy signs, bossy bollards, patchwork paving and railed-off roads - wasting taxpayers' money that could be better spent on fixing potholes or keeping council tax down. We need to 'cut the clutter'.

"Too many overly cautious town hall officials are citing safety regulations as the reason for cluttering up our streets with an obstacle course when the truth is very little is dictated by law. Common sense tells us uncluttered streets have a fresher, freer, authentic feel, which are safer and easier to maintain."

All very good and very welcome but please note this:

Ludlow traders who have been asked to remove pavement billboards today revealed they could launch a legal challenge to the move, claiming it could lead to their businesses closing.

Right. And Mr. Pickles’ well meaning announcement simply adds more to the Councils’ campaigns again harmless and innocent signing by traders. In Ludlow it seems to be a nice little earner. Here’s one trader (who runs a very nice little cook shop):

“They’ve sent letters to some businesses asking them to remove A-boards voluntarily, but then they will remove them, charge us £10 a day for storage and may destroy them after 28 days, so it’s voluntary, but with a gun to your head.”

We can expect council officers to use Eric’s good intentions (targeted at the proliferation of council installed signs) as a further justification for stopping the use of A-boards. And as ever there will be an anonymous ‘local resident’ to raise ‘concerns’ with the Council justifying their actions!

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Why the Audit Commission had to go...

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Don't have time to set out in any detail the full uselessness of the Audit Commission. Nor to dwell on its pointlessness and how it has become a generator of cost rather than a watchdog of efficiency. But this quote from here is enough to scrap it in my book.

Earlier this year it emerged the body, which is supposed to the politically neutral, paid nearly £60,000 to lobbyists who advised it to "combat the activities of Eric Pickles", then the Tory party chairman.

'Nuff said!

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Eric returns to his reforming mission - thoughts on the Pickles Agenda

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Since Eric Pickles is a working-class lad from Keighley rather too many people underestimate both his intelligence and his sense of mission. Perhaps, in the latter case, they’ll wake up following his speech to the Local Government Association Conference:

“Is it really right, in this day and age, to have separate planning departments? Lawyers? Communications teams? Wouldn’t it be better if people were working together?

That’s especially important for the highest levels and the most expensive people. It’s obviously a bad week to raise things that Germany does better than us, but they’ve really got the idea in local government. Where they’ve ended up with chief executives and executive leaders doing more or less the same thing; they’ve flat out stopped it.

Couldn’t chief execs bring more to the table by working across boundaries, rather than replicating what the leader should be doing?”

Those who remember 1988 in Bradford will recognise the objective – streamlining the council, fewer senior officers, outsourced services and an all-together blunter approach. Eric’s is very much that of what we once called the ‘soft loo paper’ Tory – what matters are the ordinary, everyday services delivered to local residents. None of this “change”, no social engineering and the barest smattering of political correctness. Give people what they want from their council at a fair price and they’ll love you for it.

To do this we don’t need libraries full of strategies, floors crammed with policy officers or whole phalanxes of people employed to count black people. We need what we had in that rose-tinted past – solid folk, doing a steady job, in the local neighbourhood trying to make it a comfortable, pleasant and tolerant place to live, work and play.

And helping Eric deliver this will be my ward colleague and Chair of the LGA, Margaret Eaton – who was Chairman of Housing & Social Services in Eric’s Bradford administration. A formidable and successful team then and, I’ve no doubt, a great team today. I shall enjoy the fun!


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