“The Government don’t like us” says council leader

The leader of Shropshire Council has accused the Government of “not liking rural counties.”

The local authority says that, had the existing Local Government funding policies “been broadly retained” for a further year, it would be facing a balanced budget position for 2025/26. Instead, the draft financial settlement shows a reduction in Core Spending Power in Shropshire of between £24m and £28m compared to what it would overwise have been.

This, says the council, means that it needs to identify further savings of £22.8m to balance next year’s budget. This includes £8.5m of potential new savings that it has put out for consultation.

The final Local Government Financial Settlement (LGFS) is set to be published in mid-February. However, at this stage, Shropshire is due to receive

the third lowest funding out of all local authorities in England. That is despite Shropshire Council covering twice the area of the 33 London boroughs.

“We have put back a very robust defence back to government about our financial settlement,” said Councillor Lezley Picton, the leader of Shropshire Council.

“I do think we need to be really clear that the Government does not like rural councils, and it certainly doesn’t like rural unitary councils.

“If you talk to my counterpart in Hereford at the moment, they are in an unbelievably difficult position. There does feel to me that there is a little bit of an agenda going on here, and I firmly believe it’s around making unitary councils much bigger.

“I’m not saying this is a carrot, I think it’s a stick that the Government are beating rural authorities with. There is a very good graph that shows all of the councils and all of the settlements they’ve received.

“It is no surprise that the very worst ones are the rural authorities. You sort of expect Rutland because they are very tiny, but you are looking at seriously rural councils. It’s very clear that the Government are not recognising funding problems in a rural area – they just don’t see the additional costs.

“What they see, in sombody’s words, is Range Rovers and leafy green, and roses around the door. We have serious pockets of deprivation in this county, just like everywhere else, and we also have a very high cost of delivering services.”