Save the library, lose the pool: Newcastle finds self-help has its limits as cuts bite

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/23/newcastle-cuts-save-library-lose-pool-john-harris

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On a weekday morning in Blakelaw, two miles from the heart of Newcastle, the scene inside a community centre suggests a perfect example of what David Cameron used to call the “big society”.

Local women have gathered for a “coffee and conversation” session, while people nearby are cutting flyers for a residents’ association’s Christmas fair. Meanwhile, an effervescent 36-year-old councillor called David Stockdale is discussing plans to bring a key amenity into community ownership. The prime minister would presumably balk at his terminology: Stockdale proudly talks about a “socialist post office”.

Since March 2013, the Blakelaw neighbourhood centre has been run as a not-for-profit local partnership, raising money and rising to the challenges presented by austerity. When the library that extends off the foyer was threatened with closure, the partnership took over its funding. About six months after Newcastle city council cut all money for youth services, the partnership appointed a full-time youth worker.

For all Stockdale’s collectivist passions, if you believe wonders can result from the enforced retreat of the state, what happens here might hint at a positive case study – but scratch the surface and it is a lot more complicated.

Related: Is saving Newcastle a mission impossible? | John Harris

The coffee-and-conversation women say the weekly sessions are pretty much all the area’s pensioners have left: cuts in council grants stopped the exercise classes and local history group. Doreen Jardine, chair of the residents’ association, says that in the past she had enough money from the council to organise up to seven annual coach trips for local children. She’s now down to two.

And while Stockdale extols self-organisation, he also wonders how his area has reached this point. “This is one of the most deprived communities in Newcastle,” he says. “Can you imagine what we could be doing if we didn’t have to meet the costs of running our library? We run this thing on a shoestring, with the goodwill of a lot of people. And it’s difficult.”

It is my fourth journalistic visit to Newcastle in three years. The last time I was here, in November 2014, I talked to people anxious about the city’s fate, and pieced together the story of local austerity with the city’s Labour leader, Nick Forbes.

The council was in the midst of a £100m programme of cuts to be spread from 2013 to 2016. Its projections pointed to additional cuts in 2016-17 of £30m then £20m the next year – and Forbes suggested by that point the financial position would be impossible. “By 2017-18,” he told me, “our estimate is that we will have less than £7m to spend on everything the city council does, above and beyond adult and children’s social care. So it’s completely untenable.”

Now, in the buildup to George Osborne’s spending review, the position seems even tougher. The projected cuts for 2017-18 have gone up by £20m, and thanks chiefly to Osborne’s failure to pay down the deficit by his original deadline, another £30m is set to follow in 2018-19.

In April, the council will begin hacking back services at children’s centres. But what Forbes is now most worried about is the social care it must provide by law. “Looking into the next two or three years, I’m struggling to see how we would do a balanced budget without closing down much of the social care provision in the city,” he tells me.

In that context, he says, “we are entering the realm of not just the politically impossible, but the legally impossible”. The idea of having difficulties meeting the most basic statutory responsibilities, he says, “is what keeps every council leader awake at night”.

Does he have any sense of the practical implications of future cuts? “It would mean taking significant numbers of social workers out of the system,” he says.

Last time I was in Newcastle, Forbes talked about an ongoing child sexual exploitation case that had at that point led to 50 arrests. The council, he said, had discharged its duties: “We had the teams in place to go in, and make sure children were safe and they were protected from further harm.”

We are entering the realm of not just the politically impossible, but the legally impossible

Is that the kind of issue he worries about now? “Yes. Inevitably, with fewer social workers and less support, more problems are likely to take longer to identify. So far, we’ve been rigorous in pursuing cases of abuse. That’s one of the areas where, in future, we’ll have fewer resources to do it, despite very obvious needs.”

When it comes to adult social care, Forbes confirms the council is considering axing hospital-based social workers who help patients when they return home (which will lead to longer hospital stays – and greater public spending). He also talks about reviewing most care packages for adults with learning disabilities and older people.

All this, he explains, will be made even harder by the Care Act of 2014, which entails a huge round of new assessments and will burden the local authorities with subsidising the introduction of Osborne’s “national living wage” so independent care providers stay afloat.

So what is he going to do? The spending review, he says, will be the first big test for the new communities and local government secretary, Greg Clark. “Privately, he sympathises,” says Forbes. “Publicly, he backs the government’s line.”

A few days after we meet, there are official briefings about a new proposal that will apparently be in the spending review: allowing local authorities to cover some of the costs of adult social care by raising council tax by up to 2%. I put in a call to Forbes, and find him less than impressed.

Like many places, he explains, Newcastle has a low council tax base: it represents only about 11% of the council’s overall budget, and even the full 2% rise would only raise around £1.2 million a year. “But we’ve got to find cuts in adult social care next year of £15m,” he explains. The proposal, he says, amounts to a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. The fundamental problem is that there is not enough money in the system.

In simple mathematical terms, I suggest, the situation looks impossible. Forbes bats away the prospect of municipal bankruptcy: “I don’t want to give the message that this is somewhere in terminal decline, because we’re not,” he says. So will he eventually have to tell the government he cannot set a budget?

“There will be other councils that do that before we do. But this is where the whole of local government needs to come together to send a message to government – that councils cannot bear the kind of cuts that are being suggested.”

Elswick is a hard-scrabble area of west Newcastle – and two weeks ago, its pool and leisure centre closed. As part of the cuts programme, four other such facilities are being taken over by a private consortium, but it insisted Elswick was a non-starter: as far as local campaigners understand it, because the area’s poverty means use of the centre – known simply as Elswick pool - has long been subsidised, it was not seen as viable.

Diane Tait has spent much of the past three years campaigning to save the pool – and the local mother has plenty of stories that show what’s been lost. “We spoke to somebody whose daughter had cerebral palsy, and she said the only time her daughter had ever spoken to her was when they were in the pool,” she says.

Council officials say they want a rescue plan involving some community initiative: Stockdale has recently talked about “constructive talks with local groups, who are interested in taking the leisure facility forward”. Here, though the practicality of such big society-esque visions is uncertain at best. “If it’s not financially viable for the leisure companies,” wonders Tait, “how’s it supposed to be financially viable for a group of residents?”

We walk from her tower block to the pool. It is a forlorn sight: a huge glass construction surrounded by chipboard smattered with graffiti.

Next door is a play area. There’s a large crack in a big plastic slide that could easily cause injury, and a square of plywood has been nailed to the top to stop anyone using it – an indication that, as Forbes puts it, “we no longer have a parks maintenance budget”.

Courtney Latcham, 18, and her partner, Connor Whiteoak, a 17-year-old painter and decorator, are here with their one-year-old son, Cordy.

“Someone must love teenage crime,” says Latcham. “Cos there’s nothing for kids round here to do any more.”

“They should be building more parks and pools, not less,” offers Whiteoak.

I ask them if they’ve heard of George Osborne, and they reply in the negative. So who’s to blame? “The government,” says Whiteoak, a little distractedly, before he offers a sighing parting thought. “I think they’re past caring.”