Passing the buck
A charity is mounting a legal challenge to cuts it says threaten thousands of homeless people.
has initiated judicial review proceedings against Nottingham City Council and the Department for Local Government and Communities claiming it is "caught in the middle" of a blame game between local and national politicians.
It is the kind of row we are likely to see more often: councillors and ministers accusing each other of being responsible for unpopular cuts to public services and squabbling over figures.
On this occasion it concerns the Supporting People grant, money from central government that is distributed by local government to providers of services for the homeless. In Nottingham, the council has announced it is cutting payments to the Framework charity by a whopping 45%, a move that could affect up to 7,000 homeless people in the city.
The Labour council's leader, Jon Collins, blames government cuts. He has pored over the details of the formula grant - the money going from central to local government in England - and says that he can see how Nottingham's Supporting People money has been slashed from £22m to £12m. He has tried to soften the impact of the cut, he insists, but Conservative ministers in Whitehall are responsible.
Conservative Local Government Minister Grant Shapps, however, has written a public letter to the council refuting the maths and blaming the council. He says the Supporting People money has been incorporated into the overall grant to the city and that has only been cut by 10.7% while other income means the authority's spending power is only reduced by 8.4%.
"The government does not expect authorities to respond to reductions in their budgets by passing on disproportionate cuts to other service providers", he warns.
Mr Collins has since responded to Mr Shapps' suggestion that the council's decision is "based on a misunderstanding of how the local government finance system works" by saying in a letter: "I must admit to being surprised at how poorly you appear to have been briefed by the civil servants." Ouch!
It would be almost amusing if it wasn't so serious. The spat between Labour councillor and Tory minister is in danger of obscuring the very real impact 45% cuts in the Supporting People grant would have on very vulnerable people in Nottingham.
On a recent visit I met a man known on the streets of the city as "Crow". But the stooping and dishevelled figure holding the bottle of cheap white cider was once Corporal Michael Hunter, commanding a four-man section of Royal Fusiliers in Northern Ireland. When a bomb blew up their vehicle, three of his comrades were killed and a proud young soldier's life fell apart. More than 25 years later and Framework found him sleeping in a stinking doorway at the back of Nottingham's central post office.
Crow showed me the vomit-stained step that had been his bed for five years and explained how now, thanks to Framework, he had a roof over his head and was getting treatment for drug and alcohol problems. "If I can't stay at the hostel", he told me, "I will be back sleeping in the doorway again."
Explaining why the charity is seeking a judicial review of the planned cuts, Frameworks Chief Executive Andrew Redfern said:
"The proposed cuts will have a devastating impact on the city. Levels of rough sleeping, crime, anti-social behaviour, ill-health, unemployment and poverty will all increase. We have to do whatever we can to stop the cuts."
No-one denies that the implications of cutting the homeless budget could be extremely serious. Jon Collins accepts it might well lead to more rough-sleeping in the city but is not prepared to protect services by moving money from other budgets.
What of Grant Shapps? How does the minister reconcile his public letter with its direct criticism of the "disproportionate" way Nottingham is cutting homelessness funding and his commitment to localism? Well, of course, he doesn't want to take the flak for the decisions of local authorities but equally he daren't appear to be bossing councils around.
"I believe in 'guided localism'" he explained to me. "All I am doing is shining a light on what councils are doing." Expect more of the same.
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