"Collapsing councils are a microcosm of the British state’s failings: austerity, short-termism, Treasury myopia and decades of failure to solve the so-called wicked problems of policymaking, such as council tax, planning and our broken social care model. Every block in the Jenga tower appears to be wobbling"
Anoosh Chakelian writes about the dire straits local government is in.
David Mellen, the Labour leader of Nottingham city council, said elected members did not have the final say over “devastating” funding gap that led to them approving more than 500 redundancies, council tax rises and millions of pounds of cuts last week. #Nottingham#Austerity#Section114#LocalGovernment#UKPolitics#Democracy
"Last year,] we banished the Tory party because no Conservative councillors were elected and yet somehow, by the backdoor, people appointed by the Conservative government have considerable levels of power in our city. Our mandate has been impinged upon. These commissioners, and by extension our officers, have more power currently.”
David Mellen, Leader Nottingham City Council
All but one Labour councillor in Nottingham voted for the cuts last week. Mellen said the alternative would have been even worse: “We were strongly advised that the duty to set a legal budget was paramount – that if we didn’t, staff wouldn’t get paid, services wouldn’t get delivered.”
Mellen said the party’s regional office and Keir Starmer’s office indicated that councillors would be thrown out of the party if they opposed the budget.
The one Labour councillor to rebel, Shuguftah Quddoos, has been suspended by the party. Quddoos, who holds the ceremonial post of sheriff of Nottingham, said all measures to minimise cuts to services put forward by the city’s elected councillors were not included in the budget.
“Local democracy has been completely undermined. I don’t want to be a cog in the wheel,” said Quddoos. “It felt like a complete and utter sham.”
Mellen said cities such as Nottingham, which was permitted to use £41m from asset sales to fund services this financial year, needed genuine financial assistance from the government.
“We need real money,” he said. “It’s certainly not a bailout and it doesn’t make economic sense. I’ve only got economics A-level but you can’t sustain this way of funding public services. It is like funding the country’s defence by selling Whitehall. It doesn’t make sense.”
The city’s troubles stem in part from the collapse of the council’s not-for-profit energy provider in 2020. But councillors point to deep austerity-era cuts and increasing demands on their statutory services, such as social care and support for homeless people. Core government funding has fallen from £127m in 2013 to £32m in 2024.