Damping Down

By Councillor John Ward

A small group of friends go out for a meal at the local Macdonalds (or similar). On checking the money they have hey find there isn’t enough for them all to have (say) a burger, fries and a cup of tea or coffee. So, they pick on the least liked member of the group and say “Sorry, you’re having just the burger — no fries, no drink — so that the rest of us can have ours.”

That’s what the Government wheeze called “floor damping” means to Medway Council and Medway residents: several million pounds taken away after an already poor financial settlement, for no proper reason.

In the case of our group of friends, the correct approach is of course obvious: all to have their burgers and fries, and make a brew-up when they get home. It’s what I’d have done!

Instead, central Government chooses to take millions away from Medway every year, starting two years ago. Worse than ever, today’s published setllement shows that the level of floor damping for the next financial year (2008-2009) has been increased by an additional three-quarters of a million pounds! It will be no less than £5,369,000 top-sliced off our funding, with no possible justification whatsoever.

We already know how tight things are here, what with the restrictions we have had to place on opening hours at the Stirling Centre, closure of creches and additions to parking charges, including extending their hours. Today’s settlement is the clearest, most blatant case of fiddling wuch funding that this country has probably ever seen in its entire parliamentary history.

We all accept that there are reasons for small tweaks to iron out funding discrepancies, as and when these are identified. When the Government’s own data shows that this can been carried to such an extreme that, if Medway were funded on the same basis as (say) Leicester City Council this would result in no less than an additional £365 million coming to us each and every year — well, it’s something that quite frankly should be made illegal.

Bottom line: why should our more than a quarter of a million people — including 29 of the most disadvantaged and deprived neighbourhoods in the nation — have to suffer and go without, just because our national Governmnt (already in huge disgrace over their own Party funding) feel that they can play fast and loose with taxpayers’ money to suit themselves?

It’s about time the law on all this were changed, so that governments were legally compelled to serve the nation, rather than their own personal and party ends. I’d vote for that!

Councillor Ward is one of the 3 Councillors for Rochester South & Horsted Ward on Medway Council – you can view his website here.