Mayor and Bishop to host council cuts summit

MAYOR Joe Anderson and the Bishop of Liverpool are gathering leaders from major UK cities in a summit to demand changes to what they say is the Government’s unfair distribution of local authority funding.

Council cuts map from
The GuardianIn the next five years, Liverpool says it faces a whopping 52 percent cut in spending, in a Government policy described by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Reverend James Jones,  as “Draconian”. 

The summit, at the Arena and Convention Centre on Friday 18 January 2013, will be attended by representatives of Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Sheffield.

"Nobody will be left untouched by the scale of cuts," warned the Mayor.

However, that may depend where you live and who you vote for.

According to data gathered by Newcastle City Council earlier this year it was northern, urban, predominantly Labour councils, with high levels of deprivation, who suffered most. During the Government's first spending round, they saw their budgets cut by almost ten times the amount taken from their Tory rural counterparts in the south.

'Dire'

“Big cities have been hit the hardest, and in Liverpool we have lost more than half of our controllable spending," said Mayor Joe.

“We are demanding the Government listen and take notice of the dire situation faced by local authorities, and will be highlighting how their policies are jeopardising the services we provide."

Liverpool City Council estimates that by 2017 it will have lost a staggering £284 million in total over five years.

In a House of Lords debate last month, Bishop James described it as "demoralising to analyse the statistics across the country and discover that, far from there being a level playing field, there are staggeringly steep differences in funding across the nation, which makes the pain of applying these cuts even more severe”.

Sir Albert BoreHe told the House: “I do not deny the need to be financially prudent or the need to live within our means. I also understand how difficult it is for the Government to be pressed persistently to fund all the demands on the public purse. The question I want to press is not whether there should be cuts to the budget but, rather, how assured the Government are that the financial settlement across the nation is fair.”

During the event, each city will speak about the impact of the cuts and how they are tackling them.

The leaders attending from other cities will be:

• Birmingham – Council Leader Sir Albert Bore
• Bristol – Mayor George Ferguson
• Newcastle - Council Leader Nick Forbes
• Sheffield – Council Leader Julie Dore

The conference will also hear from senior faith leaders from each city, and the Bishop will lead a high-profile delegation of faith leaders to the Government to put forward the arguments for fairness.