Recently we successfully passed a Labour budget at Crawley Borough Council for the forthcoming financial year that will take us through the tough times forced on councils by the current Government.

Despite a strong record on financial management here in Crawley, the council is receiving £8.9m less annually in real terms from this Tory government than in 2010 – with our overall spending power falling by 69%.

It is a minor miracle we have protected front line services by as much as we have done.

Meanwhile Crawley’s MP has been busy putting out Tory propaganda claiming a massive amount has been given to this council.

It’s really disappointing because, as a former council leader himself, Henry Smith knows this is misleading.  Instead of putting this Borough first and speaking out on the Government’s sheer dereliction of duty, he instead does the PR for it.

The truth is the £800,000 extra the council has received doesn’t even cover inflation at £1.3m.  On top of this there is significant service related expenditure like Temporary Accommodation, with much greater increases.

For us, temporary accommodation is still the elephant in the room, the expenditure on these statutory duties is not sustainable.

We are far from complacent however.  Everything we do aims to keep us above the £3 million minimum balance in council reserves for the purposes of financial prudence.

But I fear there are going to be quite a number of councils elsewhere soon going bust because of the Government’s refusal to properly act.

The level of denial of their failure to properly fund local councils from the Conservatives is off the scale.

It reminds me of that complete denial beautifully encapsulated by an internet meme of the cartoon dog sitting in a room where everything is on fire and in an advanced state of conflagration.

The dog sits there calmly watching the flames consuming everything while saying – “This is fine.”  Dear reader, the burning building in this case is local government finance and the dog is Michael Gove!

Local Government deserves much more than this treatment and Crawley certainly deserves so much more.

Cllr Michael Jones

Leader, Crawley Borough Council