Budget 'a deliberate distraction from the real problems’ says council leader

Michael Jones, leader of Crawley Borough Council, spoke before Chancellor Jeremy Hunt presented his Budget on Wednesday (March 6).

While no mention of either made it into Mr Hunt’s final speech, he did talk about a ‘landmark’ productivity plan, adding that he wanted to see ‘more efficient, better value and higher quality public services’ across education, police, courts and councils.

He also told a national Sunday newspaper that it was hard to defend spending money on ‘woke’ initiatives.

And, in January, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, asked councils to ‘consider whether expenditure on discredited equality, diversity and inclusion programmes’ made for the best use of taxpayers’ money.

Mr Jones said: “The government is apparently complaining about the statutory duties they require us to do under the Equality Act.

“Suggesting that following these laws is the underlying cause of the financial position of local authorities does not remotely stand up to scrutiny.”

The Local Government Association said most councils spent ‘pence’ on things like diversity schemes.

And Mr Jones cited the soaring cost of temporary accommodation and ‘funding that doesn’t even cover the increase in inflation’ as the real problem when it came to council finances.

He added: “As a council, we try to support all parts of the community we serve because everyone pays council tax and is entitled to decent services from us, so for the government to try to pick isolated examples in the name of ‘political correctness gone mad’ is both cynical and misleading.

“Just £3,820 was spent on diversity training to meet our legal duties in 2023/24 – a tiny fraction of the council’s expenditure.

“The council is also subject to the Best Value Duty.

“In a small number of cases this will require employing external expertise to advise us so we obtain the best possible advice and is kept to an absolute minimum.”

A spokesman for West Sussex County Council said: “We are acutely aware of the need to make best use of our limited resources, which is why we continually review all planned expenditure to ensure we are providing value for money as we meet the growing and increasingly complex needs of our diverse communities.”

While councils up and down the country are struggling to balance their budgets for 2024/25, the county, district and borough councils in West Sussex managed to do so – some with the use of reserves, some without.

Chichester District Council was one of those which did not use reserves.

A spokesman said: “As people are aware, there are strong pressures on local government. We’ll still face challenges over the next couple of years which we will be regularly monitoring.”

They added: “As a council we are very careful with our budgets and take managing council finances extremely seriously and we continue to be proactive around monitoring our financial position.

“Regarding use of consultants, we only employ them where we need a very specialist skill set that is not required permanently, and where employing someone with that skill set would be a false economy.

“For example in the past we have used transport consultants to undertake traffic modelling work.”

This was a position taken by both Horsham District Council and Mid Sussex District Council when it came to consultants.

A spokesman for Mid Sussex said: “We are still awaiting the detail of the plans announced by the government.

“We value the diversity of both our communities and workforce and wish to support inclusion within both. So we integrate work on these issues across all our services. It is business as usual.”

Not all councils employ diversity or inclusion officers, but, as a spokesman for Horsham District Council said, they ensure that ‘time is spent on understanding and meeting the legal requirements of the Equalities Act 2010’.