Northumberland council leader 'disappointed' despite £13 million funding boost

The council will receive £192.2m from Government this year – up from £178.9m last year.

The council had expected to receive just under £3.2m from the rural services grant, which was paid to certain local authorities in recognition of the additional costs of delivering services in sparsely populated areas.

As part of Labour’s local government spending review the grant was “re-purposed”.

The Government has also confirmed Northumberland will not receive any cash from the £600m Recovery Grant announced as part of the Autumn Budget to support areas most in need.

These two factors mean that, despite uplifts in other areas, the county council has seen a decrease of £2.6m since December in the amount it expected to receive from central Government.

Council leader Glen Sanderson said: “Based on the professional expertise of our finance staff, we didn’t expect the total to be down by £2.5m.

“We have had more in certain areas, but the total is £2.5m less than had been expected. This is because the rural services delivery grant, which we expected to be £3.2m, has been completely taken away and we have received absolutely nothing from the Recovery Grant.

“We had also expected the full amount of National Insurance contributions to be given back to councils by Government, but that has not happened. It looks like we’re going to be over £1m short on that too.

“These are pretty serious implications for us. We are currently looking to see how we might be able to find further savings, but it won’t affect front line services or our regeneration programme.

“Altogether it is a really disappointing settlement from Government. We will have to tighten our belts another notch.”

Between 2010 and 2023, the Conservative Government cut funding to Northumberland by £130.18m in real terms.

Northumberland Labour leader Scott Dickinson claimed: “This is the first time in 14 years that the council has had an increase in Government funding. To say otherwise is misleading.

“It is a significant rise to what was anticipated in terms of the austerity they had expected to get from their Government, which Cllr Sanderson never kicked off about for years. There is no getting away from the fact that the council has additional funding.

“The council has come off far better and had a real terms increase. Over the last eight years when the Conservatives have been in charge they have lost millions of pounds and there has never been a squeak.”

A spokesman for theMinistry for Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “We are injecting £69 billion of funding into council budgets across England to help them drive forward the government’s Plan for Change.

“The Rural Services Delivery Grant does not properly account for need, and a large number of predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it. That is not right and is why we have re-purposed the grant to allocate money more effectively, announcing new funding for local areas.”