Surrey County Conservatives

Surrey’s residents and businesses would benefit from properly funded local authorities (29th September)

Andrew Povey to continue to push the government for fairer funding.

“The Coalition government has made a very impressive start and Eric Pickles in particular has proved himself to be a friend of local government as someone who understands that local government should be just that, ‘local’, whereas Labour saw, and still sees, local government as the local arm of HM Government.

One area that still needs addressing, however, is the vexed issue of local government funding. Under Labour the funding settlement was visibly skewed against local authorities such as those in Surrey, and we currently raise over 80% of our funding via the Council Tax and Surrey’s local authorities find themselves collectively the worst funded shire county authorities.

We at Surrey County Council fully understand that addressing the local government funding settlement is not top of this government’s in-tray and that addressing Labour’s appalling economic legacy must be their top priority, but it is our profound belief that investment in Surrey’s infrastructure will help to boost the British economy and help to get the country back onto its feet.

That is why we are delighted that Sam Gyimah and Dominic Raab in particular have very publicly pledged to fight the corner of Surrey’s local authorities at Westminster. We understand that all local authorities can and will make the case that they should receive a more generous local government funding settlement, but we believe Surrey’s case to be stronger and backed up by much supporting evidence”.