As the Government continued work on cutting the deficit, local councils were told last week what savings they would have to find as part of their share of the initial round of cuts.

But with reductions varying for each authority, has the Prime Minister been feathering his own constituency nest?

This was the apparent claim of one Labour MP during yesterday’s PMQs.

The Claim

Brent North MP Barry Gardiner challenged David Cameron on the apparently different experiences in the Prime Minister’s Witney constituency, compared with Brent, represented by Mr Gardiner.

Mr Gardiner asked: “Can the Prime Minister explain why the changes to local government funding last week mean that, in Witney in Oxfordshire, people will see an uplift of 1.7 per cent, while children in Brent will see a loss from their education budget of £1.88 million?”

Analysis

Full Fact put a call in the Mr Gardiner’s office to find the source of the figures behind his claim. We are yet to receive a response.

In order to try and establish the facts, we contacted the Department for Communities and Local Government, who referred us to the data showing the cuts on a council by council basis.

This, we were told, was the only available breakdown by local area of the funding changes announced last week.

The town, of course, is not a local authority, so the best approximation is for the council which encompasses Witney – Oxfordshire County Council.

In the hope we might be able to establish the source of the claim we went to Oxfordshire County Council, but again they said they knew nothing of a 1.7 per cent uplift for Witney or indeed the county council as a whole.

Likewise we contacted West Oxfordshire District Council, based in Witney, who were again unable to give us any indication of where the claim may have come from.

At least the figure for cuts to Brent’s education budget are included in the DCLG figures.

As the column for the Department for Education Grants confirms Brent’s funding is being cut by £1.882 million.

As a spokesman for the council explained: “The figure relates to cuts being made this year. It will come from our Area Based Government grant which provides money for Connexions, positive activities for young people, social care and school development grants. The figure of £1.88m is an in year decrease of 24% and leaves our grant at £7.52m. Other boroughs in London are facing reductions. “

Yet coming back to Mr Gardiner’s comparison with Oxfordshire, it seems that an important detail has been overlooked.

The equivalent cut faced across Oxfordshire is actually £2.89 million.

Indeed looking at the cuts faced as a whole the percentage cut in the budget for Oxfordshire is 0.7 per cent, while funding to Brent council came down at a lower rate of 0.5 per cent.

Conclusion

Full Fact has not been able to substantiate the claim that David Cameron’s Witney constituency received an uplift of 1.7 per cent in funding from last week’s announcement.

Indeed from the figures we have seen and our contact with Oxfordshire County Council and West Oxford District Council, the reverse appears to be true.

This is not to say that the point made by Mr Gardiner is necessarily wrong. We are still awaiting a response to our enquiry.

There is a wider debate about which areas will be hardest hit both by last week’s reductions in local authority grants, and more general deficit reduction attempts.

Shadow Local Government Secretary John Denham pointed out that east London Borough Newham saw funding cut by £4.6 million while wealthier parts of town like Richmond saw cuts of £906,000.

A debate around these comparisons would at least based on the DCLG figures.

 
Patrick Casey