Don't forget the local council elections on 4th May!

As a resident of the county of Cumbria this is written from a local perspective, but the same issues apply wherever you live in the UK! 

Although our attention is now focused on the General Election in June, the local council elections are very important too, as our county council set the budgets for many of the services provided in Cumbria.

Just so that you know, these are the services the county council funds, provides or administers:

• State Schools and Children's Services, including Foster placement and Education Welfare
• Adult Social Care Services
• Fire and Rescue Service (advice for emergencies here)
• Trading Standards
• Roads, footpaths and street lights (report a fault here)
• Libraries and Archives
• Blue Badge Scheme
• Public Health
• Public Safety
• Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths
• Civil Marriage Services
• Coroner Service
• Transportation
• Waste Management

I doubt there is a person in the county who is not a user of one or more of these services, yet we tend to overlook local council elections, especially when a General Election is looming as now. 

So, why should you vote on 4th May?

Currently here in Cumbria there are 84 county councillors - one each for the 84 electoral divisions the county is divided into geographically. 

The current make-up of the county council is as follows: 

Labour:  36

Liberal Democrats: 15

Conservatives: 25

Independents: 8

In the last county council election Labour won the most seats but did not have an overall majority (43 required) on the county council, so needed to form an alliance with another group, which after the 2013 county council elections was the LibDem group (presumably considered the lesser of two evils!)  

Currently county council funding is provided by a combination of central government grants, Council Tax (a locally set tax based on house value), Business Rates, and fees and charges from certain services such as "decriminalised parking enforcement."

The government's website gives the information that,

"At the start of the 2010 Parliament, almost 80% of council expenditure was financed by central government grant; by next year Revenue Support Grant will account for only 16% of spending power; by 2019 to 2020 only 5%."

A current example on the East Sussex council website gives the following proportions for funding: 

Overall, local government spending is paid for by three main sources:

• Central Government − 61%
• Business rates − 17%
• Council tax − 22%

Some of the money is what is classed as hypothecated (i.e. ring-fenced) meaning that it can only be spent in a very specific manner - in essence, it merely passes through a council's accounts on its way from the funding source to its intended destination, e.g. Dedicated Schools Grant, Health and Wellbeing grants, fines and charges related to vehicle parking and local road restrictions; whilst the other main central government grant - the Revenue Support Grant - is not hypothecated, and can be spent as the council wishes.

Additionally revenue is raised by means of the Council Tax levied on every household in the county. The level of Council Tax is determined by county councillors after consideration of funding needs but they cannot just set it to any level they choose. The county's portion forms part of the annual Council Tax bill sent out by the district councils before the start of each financial year. Currently Council Tax contributes only a small proportion (25%, on average) of local government revenue.

As to increases in Council Tax, historically, central government retained the right to cap an increase in Council Tax, if it deemed the council to be increasing it too much. During the Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition govt of 2010-15 a change was made so that councils can raise the level of council tax as they wish, but must gain permission from their electorate in a local referendum on the matter, if they wish to raise it above a certain threshold set by central government, currently this is set at 2%. However, some councils such as Swindon in Wiltshire have found a legal loophole and have announced increases that will mean some residents paying 7.2% more in Council Tax without holding a local referendum!

Under plans put forward by the current government's Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government the amount of money raised locally rather than provided by national government grants will rise in the period up until 2020, when it is intended that the Revenue Support Grant will disappear and all money spent by a local authority will need to be raised by the council via Council Tax, local business rates, and the payment for other services, e.g. parking etc.

In counties such as Cumbria this presents huge problems, as despite having a massive geographical area (6,768 km2 or 2,613 sq miles for pre-metric thinkers) the county's population is comparatively small (498,000 as at 2015.)   Consequently the amount of revenue that can be raised in the county is considerably smaller than a smaller, more densely populated, area. In a rural county where roads are vital, bridges are many, and funds are low, we inevitably see potholes, poor footpaths and pavements. We have seen closures of a whole array of public services, from libraries to police stations, care homes to hospital units. We have poor public transport links at high costs to passengers. We have housing that is unaffordable to first time buyers, and rental accommodation that is either inadequate or that locals cannot afford to rent.  Wages are relatively low for many in employment whilst, due to the low numbers of big employers in the area, there are many people who have become sole traders or set up small businesses  of their own, to try and keep earning an income.  We simply do not have a wealthy electorate to tax to pay for council services, so the central government grants which are funded through taxation are vital for the county.

Labour councillors will continue to their utmost to protect key services despite budgetary restraints imposed on it by central government, but you can help too by voting for your Labour candidate in your ward. By having a majority on the county council it means Labour can continue to honour its manifesto commitments.  Our best hope for the county and the country as a whole is for a Labour government to be elected in the #GE2017 on 8th June, but in the meanwhile please do not neglect the county council elections.

#VoteLabour on 4th May

Polling Day is Thursday 4 May 2017

Polling stations open at 7am and close at 10pm. Use your vote - #VoteLabour for a society that works for everyone not just the privileged and richest few. 

So why did I join the Labour Party?

I was recently asked a question: why did you join the Labour Party?  Thinking about why I did took me back to the early years of my life and it was all my grandpa's doing...

I loved listening to my grandpa when I was a little girl - he died when I was 9 - and he was a lifelong socialist, having joined the army at 15 (having lied about his age), been shipped out to France in WW1, saw what "the nobs" did to the troops, and came home totally disillusioned with the army and those in charge of the country.

Having been gassed in the trenches he was bedridden by the time I was born, and I used to sit and listen to him talk about the old socialists, about how he wasn't able to speak out against exploitation of workers for fear of losing his job as a tram driver - which with a wife and 4 kids would have meant homelessness and penury, about the desperate situation of families in the 1930's depression when there was no work and no money coming in, about having to pay to see the doctor if you were ill, about the setting up of the welfare state, about Nye Bevan and the creation of the NHS after WW2, about houses being built to replace slums, and about the fact that he had an old age pension to live on until he died at the age of 67.

His words are still with me and he profoundly influenced my thinking and my political views.

When I left school and started work in a local shop (at 16) I joined the shop-workers' trades union and then the Labour Party in Kendal. I served on Kendal trades council, and helped canvas with the Labour Party for local councillors before moving to London to work for USDAW, and later for another smaller transport trades union. I was very much involved in trades union campaigns in London in the 1980s, attended and spoke at USDAW conferences as a delegate, and canvassed for Labour in Ilford, Camden and Hackney in various elections.

I listened to, and had the pleasure of meeting, Tony Benn at one of the fringe meetings during the miners' strike in 1984; I set up and ran a food collection point for Kent miners from our union office during that strike; helped raise money to send to the women of the Greenham Common Peace Camp; took part in endless marches and demo's in Liverpool and London against the privatisations that were happening under Margaret Thatcher's Tory government; and stood in vigils outside the South African embassy against apartheid (I wasn't there at the time Jeremy Corbyn was arrested but I remember it happening and seeing the newspaper coverage of it) and outside the American embassy against Cruse missiles.

In 1986 I moved back north with my new baby son and dropped out of political activity to become involved in small village life. I found that it is very easy to forget that the rest of the world moves on when you live in a rural area where little changes year on year.  I hated seeing what was happening in the Labour Party under Blair's leadership so I walked away and thought I would never come back if it was going along that road. For me the change to Clause 4, and the invasion of Iraq were not compatible with Socialism, and as time went on I could see little difference between New Labour (as it became known) and the previous Tory government.

In 2010 when the Tories and Lib Dems formed the coalition government I had no idea that things were going to get worse. My local MP is a LibDem and he has always been a decent-enough chap who seems to work hard for his constituency, but then things started to decline. Friends elsewhere and locally started sharing petitions about cut backs and closures; the pension age for women of my age group suddenly shot up from 60 to 65, then 66; hospitals were threatened with cuts; social services were slashed; libraries were closing; schools were becoming academies; student university fees rocketed from £3,000 pa to £9,000 pa; and the welfare benefits system seemed to be all but dismantled, with horrendous bullying of claimants leading to mental illness and suicides in many cases. What was going on? It was enough to shake me out of my rural bubble and make me take more notice. I signed petitions, wrote letters to the aforementioned MP, and started talking about politics again.

Then in 2015 another disaster happened: the Tories were re-elected with a majority so they no longer need the LibDem support to make a government, which was just as well for the latter, as the LibDems had lost all but 8 of their seats, presumably as punishment for doing the 2010 deal with the Tories. I was in shock: how could this be? How could people vote for a party which cut vital services? A party which hounded sick and disabled people so that they committed suicide rather than face that terrible system. A party which claimed that austerity was the only way to sort out the country's financial situation, whilst still wanting to spend billions of pounds on a weapons system that will never be able to be used! The Labour Party clearly had not made its opposition to the Tories clear enough: being Tory light isn't what opposition is all about, and the electoral result showed it. I was close to despair!

Then a man called Jeremy Corbyn hit the headlines; I listened to his speeches and he re-lit my fire. I remembered him from the 1980's newspaper coverage back in London, so I signed up as a supporter and paid my £3 so I could vote for him then, as I didn't get any papers from that (although my husband and son - who signed up after me - did get them), I joined as a full member on the last day I could prior to the leadership election. I am so glad that I did! I got my ballot papers, voted for JC, and did my bit on social media to help raise awareness of him. On the day the announcement was due I was sat shaking like a leaf in a gale, desperate for Jeremy Corbyn to win and dreading what would happen if he didn't.  I saw the ballot result and promptly burst into tears, such was my relief, and cried for half an hour!

Since then I've attended local CLP meetings, volunteered to help with the website/social media team for the CLP, leafleted in support of our local council candidate, and I am helping set up a Momentum branch for the area. Am I back? Yes! Why? Because I believe that with a Labour government, under the leadership team of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, people will get a far fairer deal out of life.

I do not support austerity, which causes a downward spiral in the economy to the detriment of public services and people's lives. I do not support cuts in services, or privatising NHS services, or bullying people off benefits, or testing small children to make the schools look good in their league tables, or selling off social housing. I don't want to see people living in fear of the DWP, or worrying about how pay their rent/mortgage or feed their kids, of choosing whether to eat or have heating. I do support everyone being entitled to a decent standard of living and for society to treat everyone equally.

The mark of a decent society, my grandpa used to say, is demonstrated by how the old, the weak, the sick and the vulnerable are treated within it. Under that yardstick the Tories have failed miserably, but Labour under Jeremy Corbyn can and will succeed, and I'm going to help him as much as I can!