THE government announced how much money Thurrock and other councils across England can expect in grants on Thursday (18 December).
Thurrock Council Leader, Cllr John Kent, said: “Obviously we’ve only just had a chance to look at the headlines, but it doesn’t look great, in fact it seems worse than we had feared – around £1.2 million worse and we had estimated a £9 million reduction in grant.
“The problem is the way the government packages the money. They’re saying there is an average 1.8 per cent reduction, but for us it works out at 2.2 per cent even looking at the government’s complex ‘spending power’ figures.
“But this includes ring-fenced grants like Public Health and even the Thurrock Clinical Commissioning Group’s contribution to the Better Care Fund – a joint council-health scheme that starts in April.”
Cllr Kent added: “If we strip out all of this and just look at the general grant for all traditional council services and compare next year with this year, we’re looking at a 25 per cent reduction for core services – yes, like-for-like, the grant has been reduced by a quarter.
“The government also makes assumptions about what we will bring in in council tax and business rates and we all know that there are major problems with business rates at the moment.”
Included in the “settlement” is a promise of money to develop the plans for widening the A13 between The Manorway and the Orsett Cock junctions to ease traffic congestion associated with the London Gateway port development.
Cllr Kent said: “We have already spoken with the Department for Transport today and confirmed that everything’s on track and meetings have been confirmed for the New Year.”
Overall the scheme will cost around £90 million which includes funding from the port itself agreed in the Local Development Order and a £5 million grant for early next year to complete the design and official business case for the project.
