Bradford and Calderdale council leaders explain the cuts they are having to make due to financial pressures

Across the country, local councils have been struggling to make ends meet and many councils in Yorkshire have had to announce cuts to their services.

Councils in a number of areas, such as Nottingham, have already been forced to announce bankruptcy, and many councils in Yorkshire have announced they are also facing pressure. The City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council is one of these and has had to announce £40 million in cuts across the next three years.

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, the leader of Bradford Council, has now spoken out about the kinds of pressures councils are facing. Meanwhile, in Calderdale, the Council has also had to ask for government support after finding out it would be worse off than expected this year.

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Similarly, Councillor Jane Scullion, the leader of Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, has spoken about the similar pressures faced in Calderdale and around the rest of the council.

Financial pressures mount

In Bradford, the vast majority of the budget is going on Children’s and Adult’s social care, which the council is required to spend its budget on. Councillor Hinchcliffe explained that over the last 13 years, the council has already had to make £350 million in cuts due to austerity as the councils receive less funding from the government.

Meanwhile, demand for council services has increased “massively”, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Bradford is also a young city, meaning there are more people than ever and more money is needed for services for young people.

Councillor Hinchcliffe said: “So, for all those reasons we’ve had to put £350 million worth of cuts over the last 13 years and eventually we get to a situation which is where we have now 87% of our projected spend, against our budget we set in February, is going to be spent on adult services and children’s services.”

This means the money is going on helping elderly people who need assistance to stay in their own homes, it’s going towards people with learning disabilities or physical disabilities who need help to live in their communities. Other funding is going towards children who may have been abused, or who have complex health needs or mental health challenges.

Councillor Hinchcliffe added: “We have no choice but to do that and actually, there is obviously a moral imperative to do that work as well as being legally obliged to do it.

“You can’t say no to those costs when they come through the door because that is children in desperate need and we have to immediately jump to it and support those children as I think our residents would expect us to do.”

In Bradford, children’s social care is run by a trust, called Bradford Children and Families Trust, which is owned by the council, but with board members appointed by the government. This year, they have said they will need £250 million to run children’s social care in the city.

However, the council only raises £233 million through council tax.

Calderdale is also facing a similar issue when it comes to social care in the district. They are also getting less money from the government and have had to make cuts in a number of areas.

Council Leader Jane Scullion has said there are a number of factors at work when it comes to the crisis engulfing councils today. This includes the lower funding from the government, inflation, and the increase in social care costs.

She said: “It isn’t one thing, there are some things that are harder than others to deal with. We spend 70% of our council budget on adult’s and children’s social care and it’s the costs of children’s social care that are particularly peaking at the moment because of course we have a number of children in care and we have to look after them.”

During the Covid-19 pandemic, costs increased massively in this area in Calderdale as well. With the changes to council funding over the past decade, with the council reporting a loss of £110 million in funding since 2010 and so the councils are now more reliant on council tax and are struggling to pay for everything they have provided in the past.

This means, in Calderdale, the council only has around 30% of its budget at its discretion, as the other 70% goes on the statutory cost of social care. Councillor Scullion added: “That 30%, that’s things like the leisure centres and the parks and the libraries and things that most people care about because unless you’ve got a child needing care or an elderly relative, you wouldn’t know where the 70% goes.”

While Councillor Scullion said the council was tight with money and was not struggling as much as their neighbours, they still feared for the future.

What do councils need?

With all of the challenges facing the councils, most are asking, in one form or another, for some sort of support from the central government, otherwise they will face increasing costs and will be unable to provide the same level of services.

In Bradford, Councillor Hinchcliffe said that, alongside the Children’s Trust, the council has asked the government to pay off the Children’s Trust’s deficit, which is around £50 million this year and will be £42 million next year so the Trust can continue to improve. The Councillor said: “It’s a good Trust, it’s doing well.

“It’s improving outcomes for children so we want that to be able to continue. So that would be a grant and so far we’ve not had a response to that.”

The council is now making a request to the government for exceptional financial support, which means they are asking for permission to borrow money to get them through the current period. At the same time, the council would scale back its size so they can pay for the increased social care costs.

Councillor Hinchcliffe said she had faith in the Children’s Trust and its leadership and the government commissioner, who was looking into the improvement of the Trust, had also verified that the Trust needed the £250 million in funding.

As for Calderdale, Councillor Scullion said that while extra funding from the government would be helpful, she also believed the government needed to recognise that councils actually matter. She said: “I think that you could talk about sums of money of course, but I actually think it’s a recognition of from central government that the local matters.

“That actually, it’s an investment, it’s not funding, it’s not grants, it’s actually investment in people, in everyday services really and it’s a decent level of investment. Of course, we’re a Labour Council so it’s about protecting the poorest and most vulnerable, but actually it’s about support for all communities, that quality of life stuff about how the place looks, how the parks looks and encouraging people to be out and about.

“It’s also about getting the government to realise that actually shifting the burden of taxation away from central taxation and central government paying and that all being shared out, onto the local through the council tax as it looks like people are paying more for a poorer service, and the reality is that they are.”

Councillor Scullion says that because of factors outside of the council’s control, such as inflation and the fact that 70% of the budget goes on social care, people are getting a worse service from councils in other areas.

What has the government said?

In a visit to Nottingham by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, after the council had declared effective bankruptcy, he said that this was due to “a series of poor decisions” made by the council. Councillor Hinchcliffe said: “I think it’s disappointing to hear the Prime MInister make accusations like that at local authorities.

“Here in Bradford we’ve not taken financial risks. What our pressure is, is the demand on children’s social care.”

In Bradford, the amount that the council has had to spend on social care has increased by more than £150 million since 2019 and the number is likely to increase above £250 million in 2024-2025.

Councillor Scullion had a similar response. She said: “I am disappointed in the Prime Minister that at a time where he just visited Nottingham just last week at a time when they were facing terrible floods, and out sympathies go out to people in Nottinghamshire about to be flooded, that he didn’t actually take the opportunity to go and see and to listen to people who have been flooded.

“I think the government are actually going to find over the next year, two years, three years, that actually it isn’t just those outliers, it isn’t just those few councils. That actually, perfectly well-run, well-managed councils will find themselves increasingly in difficulty in terms of particularly the children’s and adult social care bill and somehow the government has to listen and help use square that circle.”

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