‘What will change?’: council funding woes loom over UK local elections

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No dubious investment schemes, failing property developments, or equal pay claims have burnt a hole in Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council’s books. But whichever party wins control of the West Midlands borough on Thursday will nonetheless be taking on a town hall battling insolvency.

The local authority north-west of Birmingham is among the most hotly contested in the local elections, with all 72 seats up for grabs. Once a powerhouse of steel and glass making, it is where Sir Keir Starmer launched Labour’s local election campaign in March declaring he was “looking to win”.

Like many English councils Dudley, which has a population of 330,000, is squeezed between falling income and ballooning costs. Whoever takes charge will be cutting services as much as trying to improve lives, a factor breeding profound disenchantment among the population ahead of the vote.

“Local councils don’t have enough money,” said Simon Hill, a 32-year-old bus driver. “It makes you not want to bother to vote. Nothing gets done.”

The financial crisis in local government, with English councils facing an overall deficit of £4bn over the next two years, according to the Local Government Association, is the backdrop to Thursday’s polls for 102 English councils and 10 regional mayors.

In Dudley, the incumbent Conservatives are determined to hold on to as much of a comfortable 14-seat majority as they can in the face of a consistent 20-point national lead for Labour in polling.

Labour, meanwhile, needs to prove it can take back Leave-voting former industrial areas such as Dudley, ceded to the Tories during the Brexit fights, if it is to win a convincing majority in parliament in the general election expected this year.

“If Labour really are 20 points ahead nationally, they ought to take Dudley. If they don’t, either the polls are getting things wrong or there is something different about Dudley and areas like it,” said Matt Cole, an expert in the politics of the area from University of Birmingham.

Patrick Harley, Conservative leader of the council, is sanguine about his party’s chances of hanging on. He said that, despite an unexpected surge in social care costs that nearly took the council under earlier this year, he had a medium-term savings plan to balance the books.

Patrick Harley, Dudley council’s leader — Dudley council’s leader Patrick Harley said: ‘We were flying along quite nicely 18 months ago . . . then we were hit with a £7mn overspend on adult social care’ © Andrew Fox/FT

To do so, Dudley council, which has been squeezed by cuts in central government grants, the rising cost of delivering services and a historic commitment to low council tax, needs to trim about £37mn over the next three years.

Harley is betting on residents making the difference between local Conservatives and Westminster politicians, who he acknowledges are not flavour of the month. “Our support locally, we believe, is holding up,” he said.

But he railed, as much as his Labour rival, about the dysfunctional funding system that makes councils responsible for the growing yet sometimes wildly unpredictable demand for social care and is bringing local authorities across England to their knees.

“We were flying along quite nicely 18 months ago . . . then we were hit with a £7mn overspend on adult social care,” he said. The costs related to just five complex individual cases.

Nearby Labour-run Birmingham is among a handful of authorities that have been forced into de facto bankruptcy recently as a result of the mishandling of finances, in the city’s case an equal pay claim.

But Dudley is an example of the kind of council the LGA has recently been warning about, which has done nothing terribly wrong but is still in dire straits. Cuts in central government funding by the Conservatives in Westminster since 2010 mean it is struggling to preserve basic maintenance on roads and in parks, while meeting rising demand for social services.

Pete Lowe, leader of the Labour opposition on the council, said the cynicism among residents had been exacerbated both by the slow pace of delivery and paucity, relative to needs, of the investment that former prime minister Boris Johnson talked up when he promised in a speech in Dudley in 2020 to “unite and level up” the country.

“Significant promises were made to the people of Dudley about the benefits of levelling up for working people . . . these promises have been broken . . . which leads to everybody becoming disenfranchised,” he said.

“Our task in the Labour party is to say, ‘well actually, there is an alternative’.”

Enid during a local elections vox pop in Dudley — Retired nurse Enid said: ‘I feel a real sense of decline’ © Andrew Fox/FT

A straw poll in the centre of the town gives little indication of which of the parties is cutting through. Muff Sourani, a union organiser, said he would typically vote Labour. But the party’s move to the political centre-ground had alienated him.

“All councils are in a difficult financial situation . . . Normally I would blame the Tories, but Labour has moved so far to the right they’ve created a situation where there is barely any difference between them,” he said.

Other voters said they would make their minds up on the day.

“I feel a real sense of decline,” said Enid, a 74-year-old retired nurse who had voted both ways in the past. “I am thinking about it a lot but wondering: what will change?”