The life of chief executives in local government gets harder every year – duty bound to deliver balanced budgets, in an annual exercise which has become a descent into fiction. A multi-billion pound funding gap driven by soaring demand for social care and support for our most vulnerable children. Forced to cut services our communities rely on, from libraries to road repairs, while simultaneously raising council tax above inflation year on year.
Labour is now looking at how distribution works and directing more resources to more deprived areas, but the overall shortfall is still huge. The fundamental flaw lies in the council tax system itself – a regressive and outdated model based on 1991 property values, and bands that assume few houses are worth much over £320,000 – the more you consider it , the madder it seems.
