Wiltshire Council calls for 'consistent' funding from Budget
The Autumn Budget will be delivered later today
The Leader of Wiltshire Council is calling for consistency in funding from the Government ahead of today's Autumn Budget.
The Chancellor will deliver the first Labour budget since 2009 in parliament today (30/10).
Cllr Richard Clewer said recent years had seen a patch funding approach which made it almost impossible for the local authority to have confidence in planning ahead.
However, the Council Leader admits it's unlikely to be the case in this announcement.
But, the Council Chief is calling for a number of things to boost services in Wiltshire and across the country.
One primary area Cllr Clewer said is in need of support is SEND school provision.
The council gets a set amount of funding to support SEND students with Education, health and care plans (EHCP's), but he said changes made by the previous Government had backfired.
Cllr Clewer said: "Changes made by the last government to the process that were really well-intentioned, and have had completely the opposite effect of what they intended, which is resulting in a significant increase in the number of young people who have EHCP's and as a result, a massive increase in the cost of that, but no extra funding from government to go with it."
He added it's causing council's across the nation to incur debt that is not their fault. He's called for this debt to be written off with an admission from the Government that the overspending on SEND was a Department for Education error and not that of local authorities.
The Council Leader also wants to see the Stonehenge Tunnel project reinstated.
Cllr Clewer told Greatest Hits Radio that despite the authorities good financial position, he's still spending more on adult and child social care each year.
He estimated that it's about 1% more per year, but 'eventually that becomes unsustainable'.
The Council Leader added that law requires them to provide certain services, such as SEND provision, collecting bins and fixing roads, but with pressure on finances continuing to grow, non-statutory services could be put at risk.
"I'm nowhere near this but other councils have been cutting libraries, leisure centres, they've been cutting investment in preventative services, I'm investing in preventative services because they save us money," he said.
Small businesses in need of a pre-winter boost
The Wiltshire Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) told us it's hoped small businesses will benefit from todays budget announcement.
Development Manager, Ruth Lambert, said small employers need measures to ease employment costs.
In May, the Government announced it's Make Work Pay scheme, which has created a number things for employers to consider when considering hiring.
Ruth told us it's going to make it harder for businesses to employ people: "A lot of business owners are going to be quite reluctant to employ people until they've got their heads around it and decided whether or not they can afford it."
And with plans to increase the Employers National Insurance set to be included, the FSB is calling for parameters to be set to protect small businesses owners.
"What we're asking for at the federation of small businesses, is that the government considers giving some allowance to small business owners so that to take them out of paying this extra increase and to allow them to hire more staff and to and to grow and to grow the economy," Ruth said.
She added that the employment allowance could be increased, to allow businesses to hire more people on a living wage without paying national insurance: "We're asking for the employment allowance to be increased from £5,000 to £6,500."
The FSB also wants the small employer rebate for statutory sick pay to be reintroduced.
Ruth told us the FSB would like to see barriers to business owners accessing finance reduced, as well as a review of business rates.
On the reduction of barriers, she said: "One of the things that makes it even harder is often banks ask them to give a personal guarantee when they take out a loan for their business, even if they're running a limited company, sometimes they're asked to give a personal guarantee, which often means they're risking their house if things go wrong.
"So we would really like to see the government looking at that and changing that structure so that people aren't asked to give a personal guarantee for their business."
Ruth called the business rates system "broken", saying: "It taxes people before they've made a penny of profit just based on the size and location of their shop.
"There's something called small business rates relief, which takes the smallest of businesses out of business rates at the moment and that's set at £12,000.
"[The FSB) is asking for that to be increased to £25,000 as a cap so that we take even more small businesses out of paying business rates, which frees up money they can invest in their business, they can recruit more staff, they can just generally feel more confident about the cash flow they have in the business."