During an Isle of Wight council budget briefing meeting earlier today, News OnTheWight tried to find out whether Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, would be held to his promise of the Island getting fairer funding as part of the Island Deal.
As as been reported many times over the past few years, a study carried out by University of Portsmouth found the extra cost of providing local government services on the Island was £6.4 million. Extra being the important word here.
2019: PM – the Island Deal will go ahead
In September 2019 during a House of Commons debate the PM said that the Island Deal ‘would be going ahead’.
Then prior to the December 2019 General Election, when Boris Johnson visited the Island, he again promised us the Island Deal.
Feb 2020: Hutchinson – We need to hold PM to promise
At last year’s budget meeting, the cabinet member for resources, Cllr Stuart Hutchinson, said,
“We have had a promise from the Prime Minister and we need to hold him to that.”
In March 2020, the PM again confirmed his commitment to the Island deal.
Nov 2020: Leader writes to PM again about £6.4m extra costs
Last November the Isle of Wight council issued a press release in which the council leader, Dave Stewart, revealed he’d written to the PM highlighting the research carried out by the University of Portsmouth and reminding him of his commitment to the Island Deal.
Feb 2021: IWC – Will probably only get £3m, if at all
However, it was revealed today (Wednesday) that the Isle of Wight council are only anticipating receiving an extra £3m per annum as part of the Island Deal/ Fairer Funding figure, if they get it at all.
Ward: “Government doesn’t fund councils for their actual costs”
Chris Ward, the Section 151 officer (finance), explained why.
“The first thing to recognise is that Government doesn’t fund councils for their actual costs, so even if we demonstrated a cast iron solid case that it cost £6.4m or more to provide the same level of services on the Island, that doesn’t necessarily translate into an additional £6.4m of additional funding.
“Just like other parts of the public sector, there’s a pot of money that’s available for local government and they distribute it based on what they describe as ‘relative need’. So if the pot of money isn’t enough, we might get the right proportion of that money, but we don’t necessarily get the whole of that money.”
Ward: We may gain in some elements and lose on others
He went on to explain that the £3m being forecast in the upcoming budget proposals are based on taking a prudent approach, adding,
“Obviously it’s the whole of the local government funding system that’s going to be overhauled and the Island factor is only one single part of that.
“We can’t assume that everything else will stay the same and it’s only the Island factor within the overall formula allocation that will change.
“There’ll be lots of methodological changes and lots of data changes across the whole country, so we have got to take a reasonable approach to what we think we might get, and a prudent approach, and we may gain in some elements and lose on others.”
The “remoteness” factor
Mr Ward went on to share details about a “remoteness” factor, adding
“What we’ve seen the consultation, is that there will an element of funding that’s provided on the basis of what the Government describe as ‘remoteness’. It means what is the time factor it takes to deliver the same level of services.
“For example if a social worker has to do a supervision visit and they have to cross to the mainland to do it because we have a child placed on the mainland, it’ll take longer to get there and cost more and our productivity levels would be less, in an Island setting, than on the mainland.”
Interest from Government being shown
Cllr Stewart told News OnTheWight today that council officers, cabinet members and the Isle of Wight MP, Bob Seely, had all been in a meeting with representatives the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) in the last two weeks.
Cllr Stewart said,
“They [Gov officials] were at pains to gather from us a great deal of detail and check through things like work by Portsmouth Uni and our latest position, etc, and you would think, why would they do all that if they were just going to say ‘no’. Those experienced in the work of Government and ministers know that they work in mysterious ways.
“The important thing is that we’ve done everything we can to pursue that Island Deal, we presented the evidence and even this week the CEO has sent all that was asked for.
“We’re trying to be prudent, because if we relied on getting £6.4m and it’s not then our budget would be much harder to manage.”
Readers can read through the all the budget papers below.
Image: Annie Spratt under CC BY 2.0
