Local councils will be pushed to failure if austerity continues – the government needs to provide a solution fast

Your article (English councils brace for biggest government cuts since 2010 despite “unprecedented” budget pressures) sets out the stark reality of local government funding.

Local government has endured the majority of cuts in public spending since 2010 and has borne the true brunt of austerity. Much of the impact of these cuts may not be immediately visible but they have affected us all. As taxpayers and users of public services we continue to rely on essential services such as the NHS and the police, which have been required to support the resulting gaps in delivery.

Children’s services have faced challenging savings targets over a number of years. The substantial reduction in preventative services for both children and young adults, which have been “slashed by 26 per cent over the past five years”, is a ticking time bomb which will have consequences over the next decade, along with the pressures facing the elderly care sector.

The pressure on these essential services has been widely publicised but now even those universally used services such as parks and pothole filling are visibly declining in quality as councils really start to feel the pressure – there will soon be no more areas where further reductions can be made to compensate for funding cuts elsewhere.

The continuation of austerity in local government can surely only be justified on the grounds that it will reduce costs in the future and get Britain match fit post-Brexit, but we believe that the next round of funding reductions will push more councils to the brink of statutory failure and we will see the crisis in Northamptonshire repeated across the country.

The 2019 spending review must therefore provide a genuine long term funding solution for local authorities. The upcoming Budget also needs to provide local government with some emergency funding to see it through the next five-year cycle, just like the NHS has received on a regular basis. There are a number of ways that this could be funded including specific grants, council tax increases or business rate retention decisions, but there needs to be some level of certainty so that councils’ long term planning can be meaningful.

Paul Dossett, (head of local government at Grant Thornton)
London, EC2A

All success to any judicial review of the absurdly harsh sentences imposed last week on fracking protestors.

This case also highlights a wider need for judicial and quasi-judicial decision makers, such as judges and planning inspectors, to be much better informed on climate science and the implications of high carbon infrastructure.

Earlier this year in an honest recognition of his limited knowledge, a US federal judge, sitting on the case of San Francisco and Oakland suing five of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, held a climate science tutorial in court. This example points towards what is needed – a systematic and fully developed approach to environmental education in the legal and planning professions.

It is widely acknowledged that new fossil fuel infrastructure should be avoided as it contributes to dangerous climate change, sea-level rise, and the related human rights and intergenerational equity effects including the financial costs of adaptation, social disruption and mass migration. Yet the judge at Preston Crown Court saw fit to give greater weight to the inconvenience of the company, and of the public and businesses affected by the traffic.

With climate litigation cases set to increase in coming years, judicial education will be a pre-requisite for legal and planning judgments that are congruent with climate science and proportionate to the impacts of climate change.

Andrew Boswell
Norwich

I am a little confused by the latest utterances of Ruth Davidson who has ruled out the holding of a second independence referendum in Scotland until at least 2027. This is the same Davidson who in 2016 said that “constitutionally the UK government shouldn’t block another referendum”.

It is of course not Davidson to decide if there should be a referendum, but the Scottish people. It was also more than a little amusing that around the same time as Davidson’s pronouncements, her Conservative colleague and UK government foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt in his conference speech compared the EU to the “prison” of the Soviet Union, as it tries to prevent member states from leaving.

So, on the one hand we have Davidson telling the Scottish people they will not be allowed to hold a vote on leaving the UK until at least 2027, whatever the circumstances, but the foreign secretary has called the EU a “prison” comparable to the Soviet Union for somehow preventing member states leaving.

This hypocrisy of the Conservatives truly beggars belief.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh

Why on Earth do we allow know-nothings like Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson to make fools of the British people? Hunt’s legacy, as an MP, will be but a footnote in the history books. He has shown himself to be lacking in the application of common sense and any substance in what he says.

While he was minister of health he caused chaos amongst the hard-pressed practitioners who are valiantly working to provide healthcare to the ever increasing population. His ill-considered and damaging dogma had exasperated doctors and nurses to the extent of demonstrating and refusing to agree to changes in their contracts.

He now has compounded that stupidity when he claimed there was a likeness between the Soviet Union and the EU at the Tory conference. Where are the statesmen and women in the party who could take Britain forward?

Johnson is, supposedly, gearing himself up to challenge Theresa May for leadership of the party. Well, that would be a bad day for Britain if he should win. He, too, lacks foresight and statesmanship to lead this once great nation. Britain is weighed down by underachievers: those who make lots of noise but have little to say of any substance. Leaders are judged by their achievements for the people who have elected them, and by their statesmanship. Neither Johnson nor Hunt are in that category.

Basingstoke
Keith Poole

Tom Peck’s article on the behaviour of Tory Brexiteers likens them to “the useless fat kid in the school playground to whom no one in their right mind would risk passing the ball”.

I hardly know where to start with an analysis of quite why this is so inappropriate and offensive.

Let’s begin with playground bullying, shall we? Bullying of children (by both other children and staff) who stand out as different is so well known as a contributor to misery and depression that your newspaper, among others, regularly features it as a problem.

Let’s move on to “fat shaming” – ditto.

Now the inability to play football – clearly a defining characteristic of success. (I will leave aside the obvious logical fallacy that because you are deemed to be “fat” you cannot therefore play football – I’ve seen quite a few large kids kick balls around effectively in my 40 years as a parent and grandparent).

Now the invocation of victim status for Brexiteers, which is wildly off the mark. These are the bullies, not the victims, and the jihadi analogy cited recently by the Tory donor is far closer to the truth.

Nicola Grove
Wiltshire

The UK needs unskilled labour for cleaning hospitals, farming and warehouse work. If the government cuts EU migration these jobs will have to be filled by other migrants from India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Vietnam or perhaps South America. The only other alternative is army lorries outside job centres forcing the unemployed to go and do this work. Is that really where Brexit Britain is going to be? Forced labour looks a lot more like Russia than anything the EU is doing.

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