Not for the first time this year - there is a new Prime Minister in Downing Street.
Rishi Sunak has taken over following the disastrous six-week premiership of Liz Truss with the economy in turmoil and a huge budget gap to fill. He has already spoken repeatedly of difficult decisions to come and that means spending cuts.
Local councils across the country, who have seen their budgets chopped away remorselessly over the past 12 years, will now be bracing themselves for what comes next.
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For Liverpool Council, there are a range of specific concerns about what the Prime Minister's plans are. The council is still undergoing a Whitehall intervention, which was expanded in the summer. As well as that the local authority is facing up to the cost of living crisis and helping residents after losing hundreds of millions from its own budget.
Here we take a look at some of the key areas Liverpool and its council will be looking at as the new Prime Minister gets to work.
Government intervention
One thing Liverpool Council desperately needs is some clarity on what comes next in terms of the ongoing government intervention.
In Rishi Sunak's new look cabinet, Michael Gove has returned to run the department that oversees the work of local government and housing having been dramatically sacked by Boris Johnson in the summer as his government was falling apart.
In a sign of the chaos that has engulfed the Conservative Party since then, there have been two further Levelling Up secretaries in the short time before Mr Gove was reappointed by Rishi Sunak yesterday.
The first was Greg Clark, who made a major decision regarding the future of Liverpool Council. The troubled council has been overseen by government commissioners since June 2021 because of the failings exposed by a major inspection and Mr Clark announced in August that he would be expanding this intervention into an effective full takeover of the city council.
Mr Clark - who was appointed to the role by Boris Johnson after he sacked Mr Gove - also announced the creation of a new Strategic Futures board for Liverpool - headed up by Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram - with a mission to map out the city's future.
These were hugely significant decisions for Liverpool and its council - but Mr Clark was removed from his post a few weeks later by incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss. She installed Simon Clarke as the new Secretary of State for the department.
As was recently reported by the ECHO, the chaos that surrounded the brief premiership of Ms Truss had a knock on impact for Liverpool. There was no further communication from the department to the council about the planned intervention and the strategic panel has yet to have its terms of reference signed off.
On the subject of the intervention, Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson said: "As it stands, we have received no further update about the ongoing intervention. Whilst the Tories have been scrambling over who becomes the next undemocratically elected leader, we have been appointing a new Chief Executive, interviewing for permanent posts and addressing the issue of internal capacity that was raised in the last report. One thing is clear, we do not need further intervention from a group of politicians that have just crashed the economy. Especially when it is ourselves paying increased costs to have commissioners with us.”
The budget
For every council, the single most important thing to be done is the setting of a workable budget. This is something that has got increasingly painful and difficult in each of the last 12 years of austerity.
Liverpool Council is currently trying to put together its budget options. The council has lost around 3,000 staff since 2010 and is about to cross the threshold of £500m of cuts from its central government funding since austerity began.
Mayor Anderson said: "Councils across the country are facing scary budget decisions and ours is no different. The LGA has estimated that increases in the national living wage and higher energy costs had already added at least £2.4bn in extra costs onto the budgets that councils set back in March 2022. Councils will be left with no choice but to stop capital projects, or make cutbacks to services to meet their legal duty to balance the books this year.”
She added: "I cannot stress this enough – there is a crisis underway in local government. Local services were already under serious strain due to rampant inflation, soaring interest rates, and rising demand. Roads need to be repaired, we have to bring down crime, children need youth clubs, bins have to be emptied, and streets must be kept clean.
"We need to build affordable housing, and we need to invest in the support that business needs to thrive. With that being said, This funding gap will increase to £3.4bn in 2023/24 and £4.5bn in 2024/25, even before further funding cuts proposed by the Chancellor. I am not one bit reassured that we now have a prime minster who told tory supporters during the summer that too much money had gone to Northern councils!”
“We are about to cross the point where Liverpool City Council will have lost £500m in central government funding since 2010. That is half a billion robbed from the people of Liverpool. I alongside Liverpool City Region leaders and core city leaders will be sending a message loud and clear that this Conservative government must not take their mistakes out on our communities.”
As the city leader pointed out, councils that cover deprived areas like Liverpool will not be feeling confident of a funding boost from a Prime Minister who infamously boasted about moving cash from poorer to more affluent areas when he was Chancellor. Mr Sunak made the claims during his previous leadership campaign while speaking to Tory members in Tunbridge Wells.
When you look at the current financial plight of councils like Liverpool, you can understand why the prospect of further spending cuts from government is so concerning.
Cost of living crisis
Of course this subject is deeply intertwined with the previous one. As well as its own enormous budget blackhole and the additional costs of energy and inflation - Liverpool Council must look to support the city's residents as much as possible during this living cost catastrophe.
The city contains some of the most deprived areas of the country. Walton is the poorest parliamentary constituency and recent data showed around six in ten people there are now skipping food as they try to get by.
Figures from April – August 2022 show demand for crisis payments from Liverpool Citizen Support Scheme, which makes emergency payments to people for food, clothing and white goods, are up by almost 30 per cent compared to the same period last year, with 8,500 applications.
There have also been more than 8,000 applications from tenants for help in making rent payments, known as Discretionary Housing Payments. In total the council has paid out a combined total of £3.5 million for the schemes.
Mayor Anderson said: “We hope the new prime minister urgently addresses basic things – effective cost of living support, a grip on energy bills, tackling the housing crisis and properly funding local councils. Liverpool shouldn’t pay the price for Conservative Incompetence. Our community must always come first. This is about a government that has lost control of the economy, and is now eyeing up cuts to our services – support our residents rely on – to cover the costs of an economic crisis made in Downing Street.”
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