Under the Welsh Government’s Local Government Funding Formula, nine out of 22 Welsh authorities received an increase in the current financial year.
The Welsh Government tells us that its formula is heavily influenced by deprivation indicators.
Alongside Flintshire, the Councils with the largest cuts of 0.3 per cent included Conwy and Anglesey, although Conwy and Anglesey are amongst the five local authorities in Wales where 30 per cent or more of workers are paid less than the voluntary Living Wage.
Prosperity levels per head in Anglesey are the lowest in Wales at just under half those in Cardiff, and Conwy has the highest proportion of older people in Wales.
Yet Council Tax payers in Anglesey and Conwy faced 9.1% increases.
Wrexham was also cut, despite having three of the four wards with the highest poverty rates in Wales?”
An another of the biggest losers Council Tax payers in Flintshire face an 8.1% increase – despite Flintshire Councillors having launched a campaign #BackTheAsk, which highlighted cross party frustration about the funding they receive from the Welsh Labour Government.
The campaign had specifically asked for a fair share of funds from Welsh Government, highlighting that Flintshire is one of the lowest funded councils per head of population.
This had been unanimously agreed by all parties on the Council.
Under the final Welsh Government Local Government Settlement for 2020/21, four of the five bottom local authorities in terms of funding increases are again the same authorities in north Wales—Conwy, Wrexham, Flintshire and Anglesey—whilst Monmouthshire remains bottom.
Whilst the Labour Welsh Government denies that it has any intention to create a North/South divide, it is still convenient for it that under its twenty year old Local Government funding formula, four of the five authorities to see the largest increases in 2020-21 are Labour-run Councils in South Wales.
Although the Local Government Minister states that the biggest impact on distribution of the settlement across authorities derives from the relative change of overall population and school age populations across each Local Authority area, an analysis of the latest published official statistics for each does not paint a clear picture in this respect for either.
The Local Government Minister also states that the division of the local government settlement between local authorities is done by the democratic processes of the Welsh Local Government Association.
However, as senior councillors in north Wales have told me, cross-party, the losers do not want to openly challenge the funding formula on the basis that, in order to gain, other councils will have to receive less.
Therefore, in a 'turkeys don't vote for Christmas' attitude, they would not receive any external support.
Nonetheless, a letter signed by every Council Leader in North Wales was sent to the leader of the Welsh Local Government Association, stating that the benefits of this settlement are not shared sufficiently fairly and leave most of the councils in the north with a settlement significantly below the net cost of pressures, inflation and demographic change.
They also wrote to this Local Government Minister asking her for a funding floor of 4% in the local government finance settlement in light of continued challenges for the 2020-21 financial year, to be met from Welsh Government reserves.
As they said, four of the five bottom councils are from north Wales and without a floor, most north Wales councils will be faced with the biggest challenge in terms of seeking cuts to services.
They added that a floor will help to protect services and work against the above-inflation council tax rises in the bottom six councils, including Blaenau Gwent.
Despite this clear-cross party Statement, the Minister has dismissed their official representation and rejected a funding floor in the final settlement.
As one of them told me:
“It is clear to me that there continues to be very little understanding of the pressures and increased demands that local government is faced with and a conveniently short memory from her government’s 2016 manifesto commitment stating they would ‘Provide funding to put in place a floor for future local government settlements.’.
“It is also disappointing that the minister has not decided to bridge the North/South divide as 4 of the bottom 5 Councils in the funding settlement will be in North Wales”.
And as a worried Flintshire resident who rang me last week stated, “we can’t cope if our Council Tax goes up another 5%, after 27% over the last four years. This used to be a Labour area, but they aren