In a pickle over cash reserves

Like many of the assertions that are made by the pugnacious one-time leader of Bradford Council, the reality does not quite match his rhetoric as town halls continue to tighten their belts.

In total, local authorities across the region have just under £1bn at their disposal – a sum that would not even fund the ambitious list of transport improvements now proposed for West Yorkshire and York.

Some of this money is being invested in order to minimise the impact of the Government’s spending squeeze – while the balance is required to help councils respond to unforeseen emergencies.

These can involve considerable expense, as residents of the Calder Valley can testify after a year of flooding heartache in 2012 and then the Government failing to honour the commitments that were made to victims by David Cameron.

It is because of such eventualities that Leeds Council has contingency reserves of up to £70m. Yet, before Mr Pickles jumps to any more conclusions, this is just 3.4 per cent of the local authority’s £2bn annual budget.

That said, some anomalies do merit attention. It does seem perverse that Tory-led Hambleton District Council, one of Yorkshire’s smallest authorities, holds nearly £18m in reserve – a sum that equates to 42.6 per cent of the council’s annual budget. Other rural councils in North Yorkshire hold far less in reserve.

Perhaps the only conclusion that can be drawn from this exercise is that the Government is only committed to localism when it suits the agenda of ministers like Mr Pickles.

A more mature approach would have been for the Cabinet minister to begin a debate on how council tax bills can continue to be frozen – and key services protected – at a time when the latest IMF financial forecasts suggest that Britain will remain in the economic doldrums for the remainder of the decade. This exercise will be far more beneficial to the country than the latest political pointscoring ahead of the forthcoming local elections.