Birmingham bankrupt

metalblue said:
Ah re read it he was making two different points in the same paragraph. One of which is unrelated to the finances of the city council.

What would have been relevant is, I would expect, they lost some EU funding however (that should have been replaced with that domestic fund but that all went a bit quiet after a bit of a fan fare… possible due to covid) and if they decided to keep funding that directly it would have had a significant negative impact.
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The EU funding based on regenerating deprived areas has disappeared, replaced by "beauty contests" between councils bidding for less money, where the deprived areas can't afford the costs of making speculative bids to a government that spreads its favours to marginals, and minsters' seats.

We've got Sunak explaining to Tunbridge Wells Tories how he'd reverse Labour's schemes to help deprived areas rather than places lie Tunbridge Wells, but that's what they're doing with what used to go to the EU and back via the EU Development Fund money.

But mid-Wales still voted for Brexit, despite being told. https://www.gov.wales/docs/wefo/publications/160513-authority-en.pdf
 
metalblue said:
Ah re read it he was making two different points in the same paragraph. One of which is unrelated to the finances of the city council.

What would have been relevant is, I would expect, they lost some EU funding however (that should have been replaced with that domestic fund but that all went a bit quiet after a bit of a fan fare… possible due to covid) and if they decided to keep funding that directly it would have had a significant negative impact.
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Don’t think that’s had any meaningful impact. Nor has Brexit more generally. Think it’s this equality payout and the other factors I previously alluded to.
 
Government going into brum to run tge show..enjoy brummies
 
I posted a short while back on the cuts my council has to make to plug a c£18m deficit in its next short term budget. And this deficit hole is ‘only‘ £18m if the council quickly delivers a dreamt- up menu of unpalatable cuts / closures / service reductions, sells assets, imposes extra charges and burns through its remaining cash reserves.

Nottingham/ Birmingham is the iceberg tip. Some councils seem to have been careless with their money but many have been buggered up the arse by Tory funding reductions and policy decisions to load costs onto councils without providing adequate cash to help.

Not sure folk appreciate just how bad things are going to get - particularly in the North.
 
BeerIsTheBest said:
I posted a short while back on the cuts my council has to make to plug a c£18m deficit in its next short term budget. And this deficit hole is ‘only‘ £18m if the council quickly delivers a dreamt- up menu of unpalatable cuts / closures / service reductions, sells assets, imposes extra charges and burns through its remaining cash reserves.

Nottingham/ Birmingham is the iceberg tip. Some councils seem to have been careless with their money but many have been buggered up the arse by Tory funding reductions and policy decisions to load costs onto councils without providing adequate cash to help.

Not sure folk appreciate just how bad things are going to get - particularly in the North.
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Depends which Council you are on about. £18m isn't that bad for a medium sized MBC, or fairly typical. All have lost 50% of funding or so since 2010, so more like hundreds of millions.

Birmingham was about £30m PA short in its Medium Term Financial Strategy, which was nothing compared to its budget as the biggest Council, just the job evaluation case went badly. Every Council did their own job evaluation, and it seemed made up as it went along. However if you have 100s doing certain jobs rather than one person, the prospect of a challenge is far greater, so Birmingham's size helped lead to its downfall.

Some Councils have used the General Power of Competence (from the Localism Act 2011) to earn extra money and mitigate the cuts, but then you see a few bad examples like Thurrock which were ridiculous in the extreme. There are massive skills shortages now in technical areas.

The more or less final cuts were known since 2016 in the main with the shift away from the Revenue Support Grant to Business Rates retention, the real problem is demand increasing due to the ageing population, and that will go on for generations.
 
TinFoilHat said:
My council is officially skint. A Tory free council which had its central funding dramatically cut out of spite for voters who wanted rid of the bastards.
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Just out of interest, how do they decide how much to give each council from central government? Surely it's not possible for them to decide based on who makes up the council? Or do they simply cut them all, and make councils raise their own money meaning that poorer areas will naturally have less money?
 
TinFoilHat said:
My council is officially skint. A Tory free council which had its central funding dramatically cut out of spite for voters who wanted rid of the bastards.
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It’s ridiculous and counterproductive for the city that Nottingham has four different councils. It skews the statistics which frequently makes ‘Nottingham’ (city council) the worst place to live nationally statistically in terms of certain key indicators - and means there’s a lack of joined up thinking and policy across the conurbation.

Taking London and its various boroughs out of the equation, the only comparable situation I can think of where a city is divided municipally is Stoke which also has Newcastle council, but Stoke’s six towns have always had more of a distinct identity from each other, and two is much easier to manage than four. Plus Stoke is a wholly different proposition to Nottingham.

Merging those four councils would make the subsequent political mix much more balanced too. I don’t think it’s healthy democratically that any local authority is effectively a one party council.

It simply doesn’t make sense and not sure what the logic was.
 
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