The Derby Evening Telegraph has revealed this week that Derby City Council faces an £8m budget deficit. As usual, it looks like they’ll deal with this through the usual combination of more taxes, less services and a bit of tinkering with costs.
I feel that this will produce and intolerable burden for the residents of the City. As you’d expect, I think the answer is a Conservative council but I also happen to believe that, when you look at how we got here, you’ll agree too.
- The Labour government over-promised and under delivered on the formula grant leaving the council millions of punds out of pocket each year
- The Labour government preached and end to boom and bust but steered us into the deepest recession in living memory resulting in increased demands on the council and reduced revenues
- The Liberal council have failed to anticipate these events and are left with limited savings producing no return and services about to go into meltdown
In contrast, the Conservative party have pledged to match a 2.5% increase in council tax from central government savings. This is intended to redress the fact that council tax bills have doubled under Labour.
The Conservative Party also want to start amending councils’ formula grants on the basis of performance. Therefore councils that encourage business growth and build more high quality family homes get a disproportionate share of the wealth they’ve created.
Look at Hilary Jones whingeing about how little the government has given the City Council. Imagine how great it would be if that was, instead, a Tory leader setting out a vision for how they’ll do the right things to stimulate the local economy, create more jobs and increase revenue that way.
For my money there should be no more unaffordable Labour handouts, no more Liberal whingeing, let’s get ourselves some Conservative empowerment, common-sense and sound management.
