Chesterfield Socialist Party
Hardly a week goes by without another council announcing dire financial straits or looming ‘bankruptcy’. Thurrock, Woking, Peterborough, Croydon, Slough, Guildford and Hastings have hit the headlines in recent months. The county council covering the highest number of inhabitants – Kent – has also declared major difficulties.
Birmingham City Council’s declaration of “effective bankruptcy”, by issuing a Section 114 notice, rocked the local government world because of the scale of the deficit and the size of the council. Now, the second-largest council employer in England, Derbyshire County Council, has announced a £46 million budget black hole, despite making £300 million ‘savings’ in the past 13 years, and £63 million more planned over the next five. For savings, read ‘cuts in services!’
The common theme is the councils don’t lay the blame where it’s due – on the national Tory government for cutting funding in the first place, then local councillors for not launching campaigns to win the money back. Birmingham’s Labour-led authority blamed the primarily women workers demanding equal pay. Derbyshire’s Tories say “inflationary and demand pressures, particularly in adults and children’s social care” are the fault.
Recently, the Tory leadership implemented a huge 40% increase in the price of school meals in Derbyshire primary schools, showing the poorest in society get hit first and hardest. There are mounting grievances against sub-standard bus services, which the council subsidises, from social care workers in independent sector employers about wages, which rely on county council funding, and from its own 30,000+ council workers because they refused to implement the 2022 national pay deal in full.
As elsewhere, people in Derbyshire are crying out for councillors who will fight for them, not kowtow to every cut demanded by Sunak’s government. For the past fifteen years, political control has bounced back and forth from Labour to Conservative with minimal change. We don’t want just another round of deckchair shuffling on the Titanic. Socialist Party members and others are planning a campaign under the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) banner to provide a real alternative for the people of Derbyshire in the 2025 local elections.
