For a long time, the Isle of Wight council has known (and been telling us) that the grant money that they get from Central Government will be reduced.
The exact figure hasn’t been known, although Head of Finance at the council, Dave Burbage did give some indications at November’s Scrutiny meeting.
Now known
With the announcement today, we now know that the grant will be cut by 3.88% in the first year, followed by 3.21% the following year.
Front Loading Reduced
UPDATE 17:41: Labeling his proposals as “Progressive,” the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, this afternoon said in the House of Commons that he would, “Listen to concerns on Front Loading,” meaning that the majority of the cuts were going to be made in the first year.
From what Eric Pickles said later, it sounded like the majority of the savings would have to be made in the first two years, rather than all in the first.
Grants cut less than expected
UPDATE: 16:54 With VentnorBlog now having had a chance to review the specific figures, it appears that the IW council will only lose £6m in Government grants – a difference of £2.5m, from the IW council’s original estimate of a loss of £8.5m.
With the announcement of the actual figure, this could mean an adjustment to the IW council’s cuts.
Details of the figures
UPDATE: 17:07 Further examination of the in-depth figures show that the Formula Grant will drop £9m, from £72.6m (2010-11) to £63.6m in 2011-12.
This will be balanced out by the Specific Grant which will rise from £9.3m to £10.1m over the same period – a rise of £0.8m. This will be supplemented by the NHS funding to support social care and benefit health, which will be £2.1m.
£6.5m further cuts in 2012-13
UPDATE 17:24 Further details: Cuts in year 2012-13 will drop by a further £6.5m.
This is broken down into the Formula Grant dropping a further £5.2m, to £58.4m in 2012-13 from £63.6m in 2011-12. The Specific Grants drops £1.2m, to £8.9m (2012-13) from £10.1m (2011-12).
The newly introduced “NHS funding to support social care and benefit health” drops to £2m in 2012-13, a £100k drop from the initial £2.1m in 2012-12.
What does that mean?
UPDATE 17:33: If you’re wondering what many of the terms mean, the Government has produced a useful guide to help you (and us!) through it.
It’s called “A Plain English Guide to the Local Government Finance Settlement for 2011-12” and we’ve embedded it below for you.
A Plain English Guide to the Local Government Finance Settlement for 2011-12
UPDATE: 07:49 14.Dec.10
All councils
So you have the access to the same information that the journalists have, we’re added, below, all of the data for the next two years, that the government have issued.
We’ve highlighted the Island’s figure in yellow, so you can find them more easily. It’s about a third of the way down.
The figures for the second period (2012-13) are accessed through a tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Have fun!
Image: tompagenet under CC BY-SA 2.0
