| Lewisham could lose £19m in Government funding change | |
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Forest Hill Lib Dem councillor Alex Feakes, who chairs Lewisham
Council's Public Accounts Select Committee, has written to the
government protesting about proposals to change the way councils are
funded. The proposals would reclassify Lewisham as an outer London
borough for some calculations, and could see Lewisham lose up to
£19m, or over 11%, of its total grant from the government.
"A stroke of a pen could see Lewisham lose millions of pounds of government funding, simply because Whitehall thinks that wages and living costs here are comparable with outer London" commented Mr Feakes. "Losing this money would be equivalent to scrapping the entire Environment Department in Lewisham, meaning no waste collection, recycling or street cleaning." "In addition, Lewisham has been losing out on grant money for many years because the government has been undercounting the borough's population." "I've written on behalf of the committee to the Department for Communities and Local Government asking for an explanation of why they think such major changes in Lewisham's funding are justified, and setting out our strong opposition to the proposals." 30th October 2007
The Area Cost Adjustment is calculated from a survey of labour costs,
but the DCLG have not made the calculations publicly available, so it
is not possible to confirm whether the figures reflect the true
economic conditions in particular boroughs. The current proposals are
to move Lewisham from 'Inner London' into the 'east Outer London'
group, which would mean a loss of approximately £19m of funding.
The Office of National Statistics has acknowledged that estimates of
Lewisham's population for earlier years have been too low, and that
new population estimates are 3% higher than previously. As a
significant part of the grant from central government to Lewisham is
calculated on population, this means that Lewisham has been
underfunded for some years. |
Lib Dem Councillor, Alex Feakes, is concerned that Lewisham Council could lose £19m in Government funding if Lewisham is treated as an outer London borough. |