A Fair Deal For Torbay

Local MP, Adrian Sanders, has produced an information pack highlighting some of the funding disadvantages that Torbay faces.

Adrian Sanders said,

“I have lived and worked in Torbay for most of my life and under different political administrations; Conservative, no overall control and Liberal Democrat, have seen Councillors struggle to meet community needs.

“During this time there have been three kinds local government management, district, county borough and unitary, with a fourth about to be tried now Torbay has a directly-elected Mayor.

Successive Governments have tinkered with local government structures, abolishing or creating different tiers of decision making, removing services from local control and putting them in the hands of quangos, reforming the tax base from rates to poll tax to council tax, nationalising non-domestic rates and altering the formula for the grant that determines what the council can spend and how much it must collect from local taxpayers.  

“Few, if any, of these changes have benefited Torbay.  We currently receive £58 per head less than the average unitary authority in central government grant.  That is just the headline figure because the Government’s formula for local government grant and its other distribution programmes further disadvantage Torbay.  This pack reveals some of these difficulties and attempts to address some of the long-standing questions and problems.

“Torbay deserves a fair deal in government funding and I hope this pack will help inform local people of the scale of the problem we need to address.”

The pack contains information on some of the challenges which Torbay faces in terms of funding with examples and comparative statistics.

Read Adrian's comments in the Herald Express o nthe 24th of February about funding for Torbay by clicking here.