Cities like mine have no choice but to raise council tax – the Government has bled us dry

Between 2010 and 2020, Liverpool City Council will have lost 68 per cent of our government funding. We have prioritised the frontline – protecting vulnerable adults and children – but even here cuts have become inevitable

Liverpool City Council have seen their funding reduced by 68 per cent (Getty)

When it comes to local government, the Tories have not “rolled back from the frontier of the state” as Margaret Thatcher once claimed. Instead, they still expect public services to do everything they were doing prior to 2010 – and more besides.

Everyone across the public sector makes this point.

Police and fire chiefs, NHS managers, council leaders – even the head of the Army. General Nick Carter recently warned that frontline cuts have even “eroded” the military’s ability to wage war.

Eight years of austerity is crippling our public services.

The endless salami-slicing of our frontline sets us the impossible challenge of doing more with less to do it with. The obvious effect is that when services are needed most, they are less and less able to respond in the way that they once were.

Between 2010 and 2020, Liverpool City Council will have lost 68 per cent of our government funding – that’s £460m. The cuts we in Liverpool, and many other large councils, have faced are deep and require a structural response.

We have prioritised the frontline – protecting vulnerable adults and children – but even here cuts have become inevitable. Our adult social care funding has been reduced from around £220m in 2010 to £170m today.

And because Liverpool has a high proportion of properties in Council Tax Band A – the lowest band – the money we raise doesn’t even cover this single council department.

That’s the reality we face. We still have to cover all the various functions we are obliged by statute to provide, but with a substantially smaller amount of money to do it with.

We’re being set up to fail.

Sometimes the effects are not immediately obvious, but when public services are stress tested they simply cannot respond as they once could. All too often, they have been hollowed out. Depleted.

In some places this means fewer trading standards inspections. In others, less police patrol the streets. When the NHS faces a winter flu crisis, the system cannot cope.

For us, it meant fewer fire engines could be sent to the New Year’s Eve car park fire on the Liverpool waterfront following fire service cuts. In 2010, Merseyside had 947 full time fire fighters. Just five years of Tory cuts later and this figure had fallen to just 717 – a headcount reduction of a quarter.

Councils are not just sitting here complaining about cuts. In Liverpool we have responded by commercialising our assets under our “Invest to Earn” programme in order to generate new and innovative revenue streams.

Buying the iconic Cunard Building on the Liverpool Waterfront has allowed us to rationalise our estate in the City Centre, making savings and generating new income from rent. The building was even used as a film location for the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.

Our approach has meant that we have managed to keep children’s centres and libraries open. We have even maintained our council tax support scheme for people in financial hardship, something many other councils have been forced to scrap.

We are doing what we can to offset Central Government cuts – but we now need ministers to take a reality check. There is no more fat to cut and we are now carving into bone. We are increasing Council Tax by 5.99 per cent this year, simply to maintain our vital frontline.

Public services – right across the board – face unprecedented challenges, even in providing the basics. They are in danger of failing the very public they are meant to serve.

Voters recognise this and there will be no votes for Tory ministers who continue to push ahead with austerity when their own local services eventually fall over.

Enough is enough.

Joe Anderson is Mayor of Liverpool