However you try to dress it up, and whoever one tries to blame for the situation that has resulted in reductions in grants to Local Authorities, there has never been, to my knowledge, a dictat as to how the available funds should be distributed within that local authority.
It is entirely a matter for the Local Authority concerned to decide how to distribute the available revenue funds to its districts. Unfortunately, the Labour party in Birmingham chose to introduce a funding formula, that they laughingly call a ‘fair funding formula’ that is based primarily on indicators of multiple deprivation. This is a measure that economists have called into question as being a suitable basis for such decisions, and was very considerably unfair to Sutton Coldfield.
To cut a very long story short – Sutton has been short-changed by the controlling Labour Group manipulating the figures (there were at least three different tries at arriving at a figure for each District of the City – starting in November 2013 when we were told a savings figure that would be difficult but not impossible, to a figure in late November that actually increased our budget by some £25,000, and then finally in December 2013 the budget was slashed to the absolutely devastating figure to which we are now working that will require huge savings until at least March 2017).