THE poorest people in the most deprived areas in England have
been hit hardest by government cuts since the last election,
research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF)
shows.
Its report Cost of the Cuts analysed local-government
expenditure and discovered that the poorest English authorities had
seen reductions of more than £220 per head, compared with cuts of
less than £40 per head in the least-deprived areas.
Services such as housing and planning were found to have been
the most drastically affected. Social-care spending in poor areas
has been cut by £65 per head, whereas in wealthier areas it has
risen by £28 a head. Back in 2010-11, the most deprived councils
had an extra 45 per cent of expenditure per head to cope with
additional needs. By 2014/15, this had been reduced to 17 per
cent.
The report said that local councils had tried to minimise the
cuts faced by the poorest, but it was an impossible task.
The report said: "The reality is that the poorest places and the
poorest people are being the hardest hit, with those least able to
cope with service withdrawal bearing the brunt of service
reduction."
It recommends that the next government reduce the scale and pace
of the cuts, shifting its agenda from short-term savings to
longer-term reform. If not, then local authorities will be unable
to fulfil their statutory duties and deliver "critical services" to
their most vulnerable citizens, it warns.
As well as analysing local-authority spending, researchers also
looked at four different local authorities in detail - one in
Scotland, and three in England. They found that the pace of cuts in
Scotland had been much slower than in England, giving the local
authorities more time to invest in preventative measures to help
people cope with the cuts.
The policy and research manager at JRF, Josh Stott, said: "The
cuts have forced the pace of local service reform and there have
been some positives, in terms of service redesign and new ways of
working. However, we are now beginning to see the impacts of the
cuts filter through to the quality of local services. There is a
general consensus that we are only half-way through the cuts, and,
if we continue on this course, it seems inevitable that the poorest
people and places will be even harder hit. We need to rethink the
pace of the cuts to allow local government the time and capacity to
develop long-term solutions geared towards supporting people out of
poverty."
The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson,
said: "On a consistent basis, it is clear that the cuts to
public-service spending required, or planned, are at least as big
in the next parliament as those that have already happened."