Mike Starkie

17/12/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CHf1nC3f6/?mibextid=wwXIfr

🚨Long (but important) read:

🔎 What the Government’s Funding Announcement Really Means for our area…

💼🧮 Today, the UK Government announced its provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for 2026–27 to 2028–29.

🙌🏾 🤔 Ministers are claiming this represents an increase in funding for councils—but the reality is more complicated.

🧐 According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), councils’ core spending power will rise by 5.8% next year, BUT only if every council raises council tax by the maximum allowed increase without a referendum (currently 3% plus a 2% adult social care precept - so an extra 5% on top of everything else going up!)

🙅‍♀️🙅‍♂️ Without those council tax increases, the headline figure simply doesn’t hold.

📊📉 While a multi-year settlement does provide some planning certainty, it does not keep pace with the rising costs of delivering essential services. Instead, it shifts the burden onto local council tax payers—asking residents to pay more for services that are already under pressure.

Government figures show the impact on our area:

✂️⬇️ Cumberland Council faces a reduction in government funding of around £16.5 million by 2028/29.

✂️⬇️ Westmorland and Furness Council is projected to lose almost £40 million by 2028/2923.

🤔 Meanwhile, some areas will gain significantly.

🤯 For example, Southampton is set to receive an increase of nearly £90 million—around 34% under the new formula.

Outer London boroughs such as Enfield, Havering, and Hillingdon are expected to see real-terms increases of around 20% over the next three years.

😔 At our recent Council meeting, the Cabinet Member for Finance warned that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to cuts.

😕 Initiatives like “Team Barrow delivery could be at risk” he said.

💳 Councillors will soon face the difficult decision of whether to approve the maximum council tax rise, when we set the budget in February, putting more pressure on household finances

🤝❌ The Government says this is a “fairer funding formula,” but for communities like ours, it unfortunately means less central support and more reliance on local taxpayers.

🗣️ We all need to be clear: this is not extra money for our councils—it’s a redistribution that leaves us worse off.

I have sited my sources for you to make your own mind up, in the comments below 👇

💪📍 WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1️⃣ write to our local MP, Michelle Scrogham ([email protected]) and let them know your views about the proposed funding settlement, so that they can raise these with Ministers in Parliament.

2️⃣ Share your comments and thoughts with me below so that I can make your feelings known in Council

3️⃣ Share this post so that as many people as possible are aware and can prepare for higher costs and potentially fewer services

17/12/2025

Column in this weeks local press

As the year end approaches it is fair to say the Chancellor’s budget brought no Christmas cheer to anyone.

In Cumbria with rural and tourism a central plank to our local economy our farming and hospitality businesses have been pushed to breaking point with the family farm tax and increases in business rates coming on top of last years jobs tax and being compounded by the workers’ rights bill.

The financial difficulty this government is creating for anyone trying to run a private sector business, large or small cannot be overstated.

Pensioners who were the first to come under attack from this government when they removed the winter fuel allowance, many of them will be affected by the freeze on income tax thresholds and savers have been further disincentivised by the reduction in the annual ISA allowance.

Many of the people who have done the right thing and saved for retirement into a Personal Pension in lots of cases are still totally unaware of how the changes this government has made to Inheritance Tax on unused pension funds could have serious financial consequences for them.

This Labour government came to into office claiming growth was their defining mission, yet they have had zero growth since they entered their second year of office in July and are heading in the direction of a recession that they have caused.

There is absolutely no plan whatsoever to grow the economy, Labour had fourteen years in opposition but have come into office with no plan at all for government led for now by a PM who is looking increasingly forlorn and bereft of ideas or support even in his own ranks. He has become the most unpopular PM in history leading a government that have collapsed in the polls in record time.

Labour’s lack of a plan vindicates the position Kemi Badenoch took when becoming leader of the opposition when she refused to be rushed into announcing policies before they were ready, despite significant pressure from many.

The costed policies of massively reducing the welfare bill, scrapping stamp duty, scrapping business rates, scrapping the ban on petrol cars, reversing the family farm tax and dealing effectively with illegal immigration and withdrawing from the ECHR have steadily started rolling off the conveyor belt following her barnstorming key note speech at conference which re-energised the party as she returned it to key conservative values and her subsequent performances in PMQs and her outstanding response to the budget have done much to lift the gloom and re-engage supporters who had become disillusioned.

I look forward to Kemi continuing to build a strong policy platform for government while we simultaneously develop a Mayoral programme for A Growing, Moving, Safer Cumbria.
I wish all readers the best of health, wealth and happiness for Christmas and New Year

17/12/2025

Councillor Niyall Phillips

Despite the local MP’s Christmas cheer, the reality for residents in Westmorland and Furness is far less festive. A closer look beyond a single headline figure reveals that Scrooge may well have delivered a Nightmare Before Christmas.

The Council Tax requirement is set to rise from £184.5m in 2025/26 to £232.6m by 2028/29. Over the same period, government grants and so-called “fairer funding” reduce by £39.2m.

In short, the Government is not funding Westmorland and Furness adequately; instead, it is relying on maximum council tax increases year after year to plug the gap. Residents will shoulder the burden of a 12% growth in costs while central government support is cut.

Labour’s shift to a new “Fairer Funding” model once again fails to recognise the real challenges faced by rural communities. This is a familiar story, only last year nearly £9m was removed through the withdrawal of the Rural Services Grant, and the lessons still have not been learned.

17/12/2025

Be great to see local people supporting all of these great local businesses over the festive period and throughout 2026

16/12/2025

16/12/2025

Labour’s Family Farm tax is cruel. It is driving farmers to the brink.

Today, Labour MPs had the chance to scrap it. This evening they chose not to.

Conservatives will abolish this tax. We are the only party with a fully funded plan to get rid of it.

Join our fight 👉 stopthefarmtax.com

16/12/2025

Farming is the backbone of Britain. Without it we cannot survive – no farmers, no food.

The Family Farm Tax is unfair and cruel. That's why the next Conservative government under my leadership will scrap it.

We are the only party with a funded plan to do so.

16/12/2025

BREAKING: Unemployment has risen every month Labour has been in office 📈

That’s 14 straight months. On par with the COVID pandemic.

Rachel Reeves has to go.

16/12/2025

It's not just the country that's in the red! Reeves and Starmer see personal ratings plunge to new record lows after Budget lies scandal

16/12/2025

Labour isn’t working

At 5.1%, the rate is up by a full percentage point under Labour following April's tax hike on employment and surge in minimum pay rates.

14/12/2025

Today I’ve announced the next Conservative government will scrap the ban on future sales of petrol and diesel cars by abolishing the ZEV mandate.

Major car manufacturers all welcomed the drive to electric vehicles in public, but in private are scathing about the pace of change and lack of supporting infrastructure.

Businesses should respond to market demand, not Government diktat. So we will bring the UK back into line with other global markets and save billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in subsidies and tax concessions.

Of course we want to protect the environment. We also need to protect our economy and our competitiveness.

The only winner from Labour’s ideological pursuit of NetZero by 2050 is China.