“It’s morally and ethically bankrupt as a strategy.” That’s the assessment of Salford’s Labour mayor, Paul Dennett, on the decimation of local authorities: a summary that is impossible to disagree with. Since the Tory government’s imposition of austerity a decade ago, councils have lost about half of their central government funding. As supposed compensation, they have been allowed to keep more of their own revenue. Planned changes may give prosperous areas a huge advantage over poorer communities by allowing them to raise more money through council tax and business rates, while having fewer social needs. Consider what has already happened: according to a report commissioned by the Lloyds Bank Foundation, almost all the reduction in spending on disadvantaged people has been in the most deprived fifth of local authorities in England.
Communities were pummelled by Thatcherite deindustrialisation; now another Tory government is back wreaking social chaos
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