{"id":7637,"date":"2024-03-09T17:08:15","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T17:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7637"},"modified":"2024-03-09T17:08:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T17:08:15","slug":"councillors-warn-of-threat-to-local-democracy-in-england-after-budget-cuts-forced-on-nottingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/7637","title":{"rendered":"Councillors warn of \u2018threat to local democracy\u2019 in England after budget cuts forced on Nottingham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elected officials say they are no longer in control of financial decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of people<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Wall<\/a>Sat 9 Mar 2024 12.31 GMTShare<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillors elected to run a financially stricken city have warned that local democracy is \u201cunder threat\u201d as they no longer have full control of budget decisions affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Mellen, the Labour leader of Nottingham<\/a> city council, said elected members did not have the final say over \u201cdevastating\u201d funding gap that led to them approving more than 500 redundancies, council tax rises and millions of pounds of cuts last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, last month sent commissioners into <\/a>the struggling east Midlands authority, which declared itself effectively bankrupt in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Last year,] we banished the Tory party because no Conservative councillors were elected and yet somehow, by the backdoor, people appointed by the Conservative government have considerable levels of power in our city,\u201d said Mellen. \u201cOur mandate has been impinged upon. These commissioners, and by extension our officers, have more power currently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commissioners arrived after a government-appointed improvement board spent seven months overseeing the council\u2019s efforts to balance its books. The last act of the board was to give the authority\u2019s unelected senior officers the power to effectively write the budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe tried to amend the budget but we weren\u2019t given permission,\u201d said Mellen. \u201cUsually, officers and council members work together. We come up with an agreed set of [budget] proposals to be brought forward to consultation. This year that didn\u2019t happen. [The budget] included things we could live with and things we absolutely opposed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ministers<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The budget included cutting funding for all voluntary organisations and community centres in the city, stopping lunch clubs for the elderly, closing the last two remaining youth centres, potentially closing libraries, and charging for toilets <\/a>used by homeless people in the city centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mellen, a former headteacher, added: \u201cWe have balanced our budget but it has pretty dreadful consequences for communities in Nottingham.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city\u2019s troubles stem in part from the collapse of the council\u2019s not-for-profit energy provider<\/a> in 2020. But councillors point to deep austerity-era cuts and increasing demands on their statutory services, such as social care and support for homeless people. Core government funding has fallen from \u00a3127m in 2013 to \u00a332m in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One in five councils in England<\/a> say they are most likely to follow Nottingham and issue a section 114 notice, which means they cannot balance their budget, this year or next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birmingham, which has also seen some functions taken over by government commissioners, last week passed what has been described as the largest-ever cuts in local government history<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All but one Labour<\/a> councillor in Nottingham voted for the cuts last week. Mellen said the alternative would have been even worse: \u201cWe were strongly advised that the duty to set a legal budget was paramount \u2013 that if we didn\u2019t, staff wouldn\u2019t get paid, services wouldn\u2019t get delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labour party officials also appear to have exerted influence over councillors behind the scenes. Mellen said the party\u2019s regional office and Keir Starmer\u2019s office indicated that councillors would be thrown out of the party if they opposed the budget, as Labour is trying to project an image of economic responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were advised that [voting against the budget] wouldn\u2019t be beneficial for continuing membership of the Labour party,\u201d Mellen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Councillor Shuguftah Quddoos, who is the sheriff of Nottingham, was suspended by Labour after refusing to vote for the city\u2019s budget cuts. Photograph: Tracey Whitefoot\/Nottingham City Council<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The one Labour councillor to rebel, Shuguftah Quddoos, has been suspended by the party. Quddoos, who holds the ceremonial post of sheriff of Nottingham, said all measures to minimise cuts to services put forward by the city\u2019s elected councillors were not included in the budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLocal democracy has been completely undermined. I don\u2019t want to be a cog in the wheel,\u201d said Quddoos. \u201cIt felt like a complete and utter sham.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quddoos said she urged her Labour colleagues to follow the example of the Poplar rates rebellion in 1921, when councillors in the East End of London were imprisoned <\/a>for defying what they saw as an unfair funding system. Their actions led to fairer funding for poorer areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll go to prison for six weeks. I love my city that much,\u201d she said. \u201cAt the end of the day, I need to look my residents in the eye.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ministers last month told 19 councils,<\/a> including six of the eight English councils that have effectively declared bankruptcy, that they could sell off assets, such as land and buildings, to pay for services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Mellen said cities such as Nottingham, which was permitted to use \u00a341m from asset sales<\/a> to fund services this financial year, needed genuine financial assistance from the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need real money,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly not a bailout and it doesn\u2019t make economic sense. I\u2019ve only got economics A-level but you can\u2019t sustain this way of funding public services. It is like funding the country\u2019s defence by selling Whitehall. It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said it had \u201cappointed independent commissioners to guide members and officers to deliver the best possible outcome for Nottingham residents\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2024\/mar\/09\/councillors-warn-of-threat-to-local-democracy-in-england-after-budget-cuts-forced-on-nottingham<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elected officials say they are no longer in control of financial decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of people Tom WallSat 9 Mar 2024 12.31 GMTShare Councillors elected to run a financially stricken city have warned that local democracy is \u201cunder … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[597,1519,1515,1507,1092,1351,1518,1516,15,661,1517],"class_list":["post-7637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-after","tag-budget","tag-councillors","tag-cuts","tag-democracy","tag-england","tag-forced","tag-local","tag-nottingham","tag-threat","tag-warn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7638,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637\/revisions\/7638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}