15th March 2009.

A large amount of expenditure on our local services is overseen at a local level, but the money is frequently allocated by central government.

A reasonable assumption would be that the Government would ensure that different parts of the country would receive the money that they are entitled to, but sadly this is not always the case.

This was highlighted to me recently, when I met the Chief Constable of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary – Colin Port. Colin mentioned that our local police are receiving significantly less funding than they should be from the Government, and that this directly affects our ability to properly staff our local police force.

When I returned to Parliament, I decided to put down a series of parliamentary questions to see if I could establish how big the funding “hole” is. Within a short period of time the Home Office came back to me with a table showing the amount of money which they calculated that each police force in the country should be receiving, as well as a further list of statistics to show how much each police authority will actually receive.

Avon and Somerset constabulary is estimated to need some £191.7 million in 2008/09, but it is only going to receive £179.7 million. In other words, our area will receive £12 million less in funding for the police than even the Government thinks is appropriate.

This is the equivalent of some 300 extra police officers a year – extra resources which could be making a real difference in our area. This is particularly annoying when we consider just how stretched the police are in many of our most rural areas – where response times are often well below the national and local targets.

Avon and Somerset comes out as the fourth most underfunded police force in England – lagging behind only the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

The problem is that although the Government thinks that we should be receiving a lot more money, it applies a “dampening mechanism” to ensure that it takes a long period of time to transfer the money from overfunded to underfunded parts of the country – in other words, the unfairness is allowed to persist for many years. For example, London has £35.3 million more than it should be receiving, and Northumbria receives an extra £34.2 million. Both areas will be overfunded for many more years – at our expense!

Schools funding is also adversely affected, with pupils receiving hundreds of pounds less each year in Somerset Schools compared with the rest of England. This is very unfair, and can mean that similarly sized schools receive funding differences of up to £500,000 in different parts of the country – for no obvious or fair reason.

There urgently needs to be a review of the schools funding formula to allocate cash to schools in a more rational way. There is also a need to ensure that high levels of disadvantage receive extra funding whether they are in urban or rural parts of the country. At present, the system for funding disadvantage is unfair and arbitrary.

Local councils also find that Government funding of new initiatives can be rather dotty. For example, the “free” transport for senior citizens is supposed to be paid for by central government, but it has turned out to be far more expensive than expected.

And the Government’s “free swimming” initiative has allocated money by local government area without regard to where the facilities actually are and where the costs are going to fall.

There needs to be a fundamental overhaul and review of funding systems for the police, schools, the NHS and local council services. And once these reviews have carried out their work, the Government needs to ensure that the conclusions are acted upon. Billions of pounds are allocated on a national basis in this way, and it is vital that the mechanisms are fair and are seen to be fair. It is also important that if local services are going to be held to account for their success in delivering, then this should be on the basis of a having the resources which are needed.