In the recent one year funding round Sajid Javid, he’s the one who lost a leadership race to the known, according to the Supreme Court, liar and charlatan Boris Johnson hasn’t set a budget line to support the U.K. Shared Prosperity Fund but has uniquely spun out a situation where his electioneering single year budget hasn’t gelled with anyone other than those who want to see rapid free market economic growth and those who will benefit most from rising inflation.
Javid has also changed the goalposts in regard to funding with his promises for help in three areas in order to gather the headlines, health, police and education, leaving the other services we all rely on high and dry. He knows that the last spending round for Councils comes to an end in 2020 but has not begun to assemble a spending review that would allow councils to form new medium term financial plans.
The last fair funding spending review 2014-2020 allows councils to plan and spend up until 2023 to give them time to complete late projects. It’s expected that Javid will claw back all funds not spent by November 2020 to pay for the two high street funds, the stronger towns fund, of which the issued list of winning bids lines up with the Conservative marginal seats list and the future high streets fund whose dates of acceptance are quoted as being after the next general election. It’s expected those towns who were not won by the Tories will be struck off the list.
Charities are also expecting to be battered by the Government as EU funded projects unspent cash, not earmarked cash, as has been the case previously, will be clawed back at the rate of 66p in the £pound.
We all need to remember that under this Tory Government austerity is only eased for a single year leaving your Council without financial stability prior to the completion of a new spending review period and the current announcements will put local authorities into the hands of the free marketeers as they struggle to manage without medium term funding security.
The biggest concern for everyone in the North is that in a similar fashion to this years Local Government settlement that the shared prosperity fund will be divvied up among the Tory Council areas in the South and the desperately poor areas in the North will lose out on what id meant to be the replacement for Euro funding.
