The Guardian view on councils in crisis: paying the price for dogma | Editorial
When political fixations are imposed on basic practical needs, the results are rarely pretty. In Britain today they look downright disastrous. The resolutely unglamorous but essential business of local government - emptying our bins; helping the elderly wash - is in crisis. In Northamptonshire, the situation is downright disastrous. The council is effectively bankrupt. The years of austerity, which will have seen 16bn slashed from council budgets nationwide by 2020 - 60p in every pound of core funding - have been compounded in Northamptonshire by the Conservative council's obsession with low then frozen rates of council tax and a radical plan for the outsourcing of almost all services. This was sold as a distinctively Conservative approach.
With grotesque mismanagement added to the equation, the result is the 70m hole in its finances which has not only led to the slashing of services such as buses and libraries but now to warnings that even essential services such as those for vulnerable children can no longer be protected. Its legal obligations to its residents clash with its legal obligation to balance its budget; court challenges have already begun. This is certainly distinctive. But numerous other local authorities are edging close to this territory. While their funding from the centre plummets, the demand for social care for an ageing population and child protection soars. And the consequences of early and supposedly "easier" cuts are now coming home to roost. Slashing preventative services has spawned an increase in damaging (and much more expensive) emergency interventions. The Tory MP Tim Loughton, a former children's minister, has said the "woeful underfunding" of children's services is leaving social workers feeling they have no way to keep children safe but by taking them into care, instead of supporting their families.
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