Hugh Grover
speaker
43 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2010
last heard Dec 2010
Hugh Grover’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Well, unfortunately, Tim, there's no...
Really simple answer to that question because the world of local government finance is just so complex.
But in big picture terms you could say that there are two main sources of funding for local government, putting aside things like fees and charges and their own interest from investments and so on.
And those two main sources are council tax and government grant.
Now council tax accounts for around £1 in every four of local government income, so around 75% comes through from central government grants.
Now there are many
grants streams from central government some 120 of them this year and that's being simplified dramatically for next year but one of the biggest of those grant streams is called the formula grant which in this current financial year amounts to around about 29 billion around half of local government funding that comes from central government formula grant is is distributed around the country according to a number of factors one of them obviously is per capita how many people live in the local authority another one is
the amount that the authority can raise locally through its council tax, and the third and probably most important is the relative local need for that authority relative to a threshold authority against which it judges all others, and currently that threshold authority is Wokingham.
Wokingham?
Why Wokingham?
Well, according to the government's analysis, Wokingham is seen by them as the least relatively needy place in Britain, so
they adjudge that it has the lowest needs per head for some of the basic services that local authorities deliver, such as education and social services.
So, for instance, if you take into account the financial circumstances and all the changes this year, people in Hackney, which is one of the most needy places in England, will be receiving something in excess of £1,000 per head, while residents in Wokingham, as I've said, the least needy,
will receive only around about £125 a head.
Yeah, well, that's a really interesting question.
We did some research and analysis around this based on the 2008-09 local government finance settlement for formula grant.
And what we discovered was actually very small changes in Wokingham can have a huge impact in the distribution of money.
For instance, a 1% change in Wokingham's assessed need can cause almost £41 million of, and here I have to get slightly technical, undamped grant to move around England.
And this redistribution really does defy all logic.
So, for example, the Metropolitan Police Authority in that situation would see their grant increased by £4.8 million.
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