Southampton - Bleak City?...and today's White Paper on local government

Bleak?

Picture copyright The Daily Echo.

"Dramatic cuts in jobs and services and tax rises are on the cards as city chiefs try to plug a £5.8 million hole in Southampton’s £265 million annual budget", so say The Southern Daily Echo, Southampton's (fairly dire) local newspaper. Read the article at

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/display.var.988755.0.bleak_city.php

and the details of the savings at

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/breifing/

Actually there are are no cuts proposed as such as yet. The government has yet to reveal what its settlement will be for next year. but the Council Officer's attempts to identify savings make interesting reading. Personally I think there are far bigger savings to be made among some of their own pet projects.

Today the government also published the long-awaited White Paper on Local Government (it was expected in June but when Ruth Kelly got Prescott's job she was apparently unimpressed with his brand of 'regionalism' and ordered much of it to be re-worked). Plough through the spin at

http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1137789

if you have the inclination.

Because there is a government review of local government finance at the moment, the paper is actually something of a damp squib- the new package offers nothing to help those people struggling to pay sky high council tax bills and it provides no comfort for people worrying about how to pay care home fees. It certainly does nothing to give local people a real say in housing developments, over-development and other planning concerns.

I am not sure the paper does much for democracy either.

Labour's apparent conversion to localism is at best dubious unless and until Labour ministers ditch their plans for regional assemblies. Under the White Paper plans, councils in England will get new powers to introduce bylaws with fixed penalty fines without requiring the approval of Whitehall and Parliament (why?) ; there will be more directly-elected mayors (despite being far from popular in many cities where they have been adopted); while police chiefs and local health and education bosses will find themselves facing greater scrutiny from the public (but still not be directly elected) . My guess is that should he become PM, Gordon Brown will move Ruth Kelly and have another go at local government reform. For example, it is well known that Blair favours elected mayors, Brown does not.