Creative use of council reserves to combat cuts to local services, says Unite
Local authorities need to show more imagination in utilising their cash reserves to mitigate the devastating impact of six-years of austerity cuts on council services, Unite, the country’s largest union, said today (Tuesday 12 July).
This was the message in the Unite executive council statement on austerity and local government cuts passed by delegates at the union’s policy conference in Brighton.
Unite said that local authorities had faced ‘unprecedented cuts’ from central government, with £12.5 billion axed since 2010 and the loss of 676,000 jobs in that period.
The statement said: “There is an opportunity to mitigate the impact of the cuts to central government grants through redefining the definition of ‘adequate’ reserves, along with taking a robust approach to budget setting.
“For many councils there are options for increasing borrowing, especially for capital investments that could generate income. Unite will lobby to increase take-up of these options and not rule out any measure that can be applied.
“We need to hold councils to account about the level of reserves they have.
“The breakdown of reserves needs to be examined, including what is earmarked and for what. Trends in using reserves should be tracked - are they increasing or decreasing and why?
“If a council continues to build reserves, or keep reserve levels static, when there has not been a need to use them in previous years, then this should be exposed.”
Delegates endorsed a 14-point campaigning template including lobbying councils to use appropriate borrowing and re-financing to make savings, as well as borrowing to invest where it will result in income.
Unite also called for the Local Government Association Labour group to hold a summit of Labour local authorities to discuss a co-ordinated strategy to fight the funding cuts.
The statement recognised that Scotland is differently funded and as such has other campaigns that the union fully supports. For example, pre-devolution debt that the councils continue to pay off still consumes more than 55 per cent, on average, of council tax monies – and that only pays the interest.
The union in Scotland is leading the campaign to drop historical debt, which consumes such a sizeable chunk of current council income. There is a precedent for this with Glasgow city council, which following a debt amnesty, was then able to invest in housing.
Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail said: “This statement lays out a blueprint to spearhead the fight back against the scandalous onslaught on local council services by the Tories over the last six years that have seen many services that people rely on a daily basis being gutted.”
