CITY OF PRESTON LABOUR PARTY

Preston Labour group today condemned the savage cut announced by the coalition government to Preston council's grant for tackling long term unemployment.

The Department for Communities and Local Government announced that Preston would suffer the maximum cut of 2% or a third of a million pounds (£347,000) to it's Area Based Grant (ABG) this year. The grant, part of the former Labour government's 'Worklessness' agenda was designed to help long term unemployed into sustained employment in order to reduce poverty and reliance on the benefits system. Preston received over £10 million pounds ABG for 2008-11 because of it's high incidence of deprivation, especially in the east of the city.

Labour Group finance spokesman Councillor Martyn Rawlinson (pictured) was then stunned to learn that the funding shortfall would be met from a deliberate under-spend by the local Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition on the same project.

"Over £600,000 was promised to encourage long term unemployed into work but over £200,000 remains unspent and now this money is lost forever. I initially thought that this was sheer good fortune for the council's budget but the Cabinet Member for Resources, Councillor Eric Fazackerly, confirmed the under-spend was 'planned'...I don't know which is worse! While this means that the cut will impact less on other council services this year, it also means that the Cabinet had little intention of spending this money on Worklessness in the first place!"

This first tranche of cuts to local government funding is consistent with other expected coalition government policies like freezing benefit rises; the very poorest in society will be paying for the fat cats' mistakes.