Eric Pickles' cuts target Britain's poorest areas

Eric Pickles’ cuts target Britain’s poorest areas

By Will Straw | Published: December 13, 2010

The Government is fond of claiming that “We’re all in this together”. But even taking Eric Pickles’ ‘transition grant‘ into account, it is abundantly clear that the poorest areas will do worse out of this settlement.

Left Foot Forward has carried out a simple econometric analysis of the local government cuts and compared the post-transition grant “change in estimated ‘revenue spending power’ 2011-12” with the 2007 index of multiple deprivation – the last analysis available. The figures speak for themselves.

In London, there is a strong correlation between the two variables. Poor areas like Hackney (-8.9%), Newham (-8.9%), Tower Hamlets (-8.9%), and Islington (-8.8%) find themselves with the deepest cuts while richer areas like Richmond (-0.61%), Havering (-1.71%), and Harrow (-1.9%) are best off.

The x-axis covers the index of multiple deprivation (50 is the most deprived area) while the y-axis covers the percentage fall in ‘revenue spending power’.

A similar pattern takes place in metropolitan areas. Here Manchester, Liverpool, South Tyneside, and Knowsley get take the maximum hit of -8.9% while less deprived areas like Solihull (-3.49%), Dudley, (-3.39%), and Trafford (-3.79%) do far better.

UPDATE 18.41:

It has been pointed out to me that the local government figures include NHS support for social care. If this were excluded the picture would be even more stark.

13eastie

@Valueofnothing

No it wouldn’t.

First, Labour are in control of only a tiny number of local councils.

Second, this continues to ignore the absolute level of LA spending per capita in these places. How can this not be relevant in determining where cuts can be afforded?
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Valueofnothing

I was talking about a divide between tory/liberal/tory liberal coalition councils and all other councils. So my other group would be much bigger than labour controlled councils as it would contain lab=lib coalitions and lab-independent coalitions. I guess though you would have to take this for the whole country to give sufficient sample size.
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BenM

13eastie

LoL!

“ZaNuLabour”! ZZZzzzzzzz

The rest of your post is drivel.
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mark

This analysis is ingenuous. The revenue spending power incorporates a measure of wealth, so clearly is inversely related to deprivation index
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New Labour Boy

Labour supporters and/or supporters of the concept of public sector delivered local services need to organse and closely monitor the effect of the cuts upon key frontline services durig the next 4/5 years. All the jargonista, graphs and predictive theorising is no substitute for observation and measurement in the real world. I retired from an essential professional regulatory frontline LA Service 18 months ago. Prior to my retirement, and, in pre Pickles and Shapps times, we had already not replaced 4 Officers who had moved to other jobs, nor were we recruiting graduate trainees; my vacant post has not been filled, so the staffing level is now 50% lower than in 2006/7 with no prospect of fresh young talented Officers being mentored and trained to replace ageing staff. Extrapolate that scenario across all LAs and the 2015 landscape looks bleak; ours is not a service which can be provided by “volunteers”, it is statutory, and Officers have to be professionally trained and qualified.
Liban Awad

I can report to you bloggers that my local council have have already started to cut libarery services, playgrounds are not improved. Its quite simply put, that the coalition want the youth of today to kill each other.
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Eric Pickles’ cuts target Britain’s poorest areas

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