With council income collapsing, Sinn Fein opposes cuts to council services

Councils are largely funded through rates, income which will fall massively in the short term due to rates holidays – but more significantly is likely to remain depressed for years, in particular due to many of the businesses which pay those rates failing to survive the post-pandemic financial crisis.

Other council income – such as charges at leisure centres – has also been decimated by the lockdown.

At the same time, the cost of delivering many council services has increased due to adaptions to enable social distancing, something likely to remain for months and perhaps years.

Council funding is not something which can be blamed on the Tory government in London because councils are entirely under the control of local parties and – unlike Stormont – are responsible for raising the income which they spend.

On Tuesday, Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey announced that the Executive was allocating £20.3 million to councils to assist with their short-term financial pressure.

When asked today by the News Letter if it was acceptable for councils to now dip into their reserves – held for an emergency – in the current situation, Ms Hargey did not give a clear answer, saying that “each of those councils are different in terms of the reserves that they have”.

She said that the £20.3 million being given to councils by Stormont was to not just ease the burden on ratepayers, but to ensure that essential frontline services can continue.

When asked if councils faced a choice between cutting services and staff, or hiking rates – or whether there was some alternative third way – the Sinn Fein minister said that in the recovery from the pandemic she wanted to look at “economic growth, regeneration plans and housing development plans”.

However, she added: “I don’t want to get in a position at this point that it has to be either that we deal with Covid and ... that has to be a loss of a public service in some way.

“I want to defend public services, I want to ensure that we keep them, I also want to defend the workers that are employed there as well to ensure that they are employed at the end of this – and we’ll need to look at all options available to us to ensure that we can do that.”

She said that local government would have “a key role in the recovery” as Northern Ireland emerges from the pandemic.

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