Core spending power in Crawley

A few days back, I ran across a spreadsheet detailing council grant funding, spending and core spending power since 2015 across English local authorities.

Of these, the most significant figure is core spending power, as it outlines what the government expects a council’s total funding will be. There are several problems with core spending power as a metric, as I have written about previously, both of which make it more attractive for the government to use when discussing council funding.

The first reason is that it doesn’t take inflation into account, so it masks the vast amounts of money for council services which has been lost in real terms over the years. Secondly, the figure includes the maximum amount the local authority could put council tax by this year. The end result is a move away from income tax, where people pay based upon what they earn, and instead produces a far flatter tax which penalises pensioners and those on low incomes hardest.

Even so, it is useful as a means of comparing Crawley’s funding to that of other authorities and it will come as no surprise that under the last three terms of Conservative Government (the full period covered by the figures), the town has suffered a far bigger loss of income than wealthier communities over the same period.

When we compare the town to all other district-tier authorities, we find that from 2015 to present, Crawley is languishing amongst the 20% of councils which have seen taken the greatest hit to their core spending power from central government under the Conservatives. The end result being that council has had to work harder to save services from cuts while being under the greatest pressure to increase council tax by the maximum amount.

In contrast, wealthier neighbouring areas have received a much better deal. Not a single one of our neighbouring councils has seen their core spending power drop and all occupy the top two quintiles for changes to core spending power since 2015. The most fortunate of these councils being Horsham, which has performed fifth best in the country, with core spending power this year 21% greater than it was in 2015.

As I said previously, the core spending power figure ignores inflation and since compound inflation has increased by 31% since 2015, even Horsham has lost money in real terms and Stratford-upon-Avon is the only council in England to be better off today than they were in 2015. Nonetheless, it is far easier to weather a real-terms cut in your funding if you are not also suffering from a cash-terms cut in your funding from central government.

How they can justify to themselves once again allowing wealthier communities to benefit from central government hand-outs while choking off the funding to poorer communities is hard to say, but along with £4bn of dodgy PPE contracts for their mates and packing the House of Lords with cronies it does seem that the modern Conservative Party doesn’t have a problem with people living off the state, just so long as they’re already rich.