Give us our £11.5 million!

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 19th Nov 2003

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland is appealing to the Government to give Bradford the £11.5 million for schools which the Government says the Council is entitled to but which has been withheld for the benefit of councils in the south of England.

Councillor Sunderland said,

"On Tuesday, the Executive of the council will be told that Social Services for Children is almost £2m short mainly due to the hold ups in building new children's homes and 844 children who need to be looked after. Numbers have stabilised but could rise again at any time and we must care for these children."

"Social Services for Children is struggling with its current budget and we are committed to putting extra money in next year.

The Government is also under-funding a new initiative called ' Supporting People' which may come be over £1m short.

To keep the Council Tax rise at an acceptable level with pressure to increase money for schools, Social Services and people in real need is going to be very difficult.

If the Government gave us the money for schools it says we are entitled to, this would make a huge difference right across the budget by reducing the pressure to redirect money to schools from other work like road repairs and parks "

Following a review of the Funding Formula for Local Government last year, Bradford should have received an additional allocation for education but this was reduced or 'damped' to avoid cutting other authorities' allocation even when the new formula indicated that this should happen.

There has been no indication whether the Government intends to unwind the damping gradually or at all and no indication of the timescale.

The Local Government Association has calculated that councils are under-funded by £800m of which £300m is in education.