Nottingham Green Party is horrified at the scale of the cuts to public services in our city being implemented by an unelected Commissioner put in to run the city council by the Tory government.
Whatever mistakes the city council has made – and there have been some serious ones – it cannot be blamed for going ‘bankrupt’ – being unable to set a balanced budget for 2024/2025. The amount of funding coming from central government to Nottingham City Council has been cut by £100m per year for the last 10 years – a much higher percentage rate of cuts that for most councils . The council has legal responsibility to provide social care for Nottingham citizens who qualify for it, children’s social care, and services for homeless people. The cost of these three areas of service have rocketed in recent years. So the government have placed the city council in an impossible position financially, and then sent in a Commissioner to take over the running of the council in place of our democratically elected councillors.
The Labour Party has already said that if elected to government it will not increase funding for local government. So the miserable future for council services in Nottingham is set to continue after 4th July.
Trade unions and others in Nottingham have set up a campaign to ‘Save Our Services’. They have been holding meetings in the Nottingham communities, and rallies, to build opposition to the cuts and publicise them, and try to work with other councils to campaign for better funding for local government. Nottingham Green Party supports ‘Save Our Services’.
The council is going to cut some much loved services such as the Jackdawe homecare service for adults with complex and challenging behaviours – redundancy notices have reportedly already been issued for the workers in this service. Three residential homes are likely to be sold off. The Playhouse Theatre will have its annual support from the council of over £400,000 cut to £0. Four libraries are likely to be closed – Aspley, Basford, Bilborough and Radford/Lenton. Youth services will probably be further cut after years of underfunding. Hundreds of city council workers are likely to be made redundant. The list goes on and on.
A recent in-depth investigation into the city council’s financial management by the accountancy firm Ernst & Young concluded that there were serious faults with the financial control environment, financial systems and culture.
One of the underlying causes of this is that the Labour Party has 50 of the 55 seats on the council, so it has very little opposition to hold the Labour councillors to account or question their decisions. We need Green Party councillors who can challenge the Labour Party approach to running the council, while supporting the provision of strong effective services.
The Green Party is committed to increasing funding for local authorities, and changing the way they are resourced to give more local independence. We would introduce Land Value Tax so that those with the most valuable and largest land holdings would contribute the most to their local area.