I write as the dust settles on the outcomes of the recent fair funding review. It's fascinating how those who benefitted greatly from business rate retention and the breaking of the link between the funding formulae and assessment of need, are now crying murder most foul on the way in which need is measured in the new formula. Such inconsistency makes it hard to have much sympathy.
I have more sympathy for administrations who are now paying the price of their predecessors taking the bribe of the council tax freeze grant – what short-sighted policy and decision-making that turned out to be, and I say that as the then-chief executive of a council which did exactly that.
