Conservative Cuts

Go to Conservative policy impacts main page

From 2010 to 2015 Public sector job losses reached 1 million. There were 6,340,000 people paid by the public purse in March 2010 - but only 5,347,000 by the end of 2015 (WORK IN PROGRESS)

109 Jobcentres closed
The Tory party have been carrying out a programme of closing Jobcentres. The reason given for this is that they are no longer required due to the low unemployment figures. They also state that the PFI contracts have reached the end of the 20 year contract and so will not be renewed on these centres.

Job Centres closed since 2016 Job Centres under review for closure, to co-locate or to be acquired

Support for the long-term unemployed and disabled jobseekers has also been cut. A new Work and Health Programme will assist less than a quarter of the participants of the programmes it replaced. Across the country, hundreds of specialist organisations working with jobseekers have lost contracts, and thousands of experienced employment advisers have lost their jobs.

And all this is happening when the roll-out of the new, catch-all benefit called Universal Credit, is accelerating. By the end of 2018, most new working age claimants in Britain, will be claiming Universal Credit – and many of them will be required to attend jobcentres. The already intense pressure on a shrinking network of jobcentres will increase further in 2019 when the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will begin moving millions of existing benefit claimants onto Universal Credit.

Mandatory personal attendance at jobcentre interviews remains a core requirement of continuing to receive Universal Credit and most other working age benefits. This is especially the case for unemployed claimants who must currently attend their jobcentre at least weekly, or fortnightly if their travel time is less than one hour each way by public transport. Where there is no public transport, they still have to attend every two weeks if they can walk to the jobcentre in under one hour or must walk no more than three miles each way. Claimants outside these limits, or those with particular barriers such as caring needs, are allowed to “sign on”, or report on their work search, fortnightly by post – but they must still travel to the jobcentre to attend more intensive interviews concerning their benefit claim and efforts to seek or prepare for work.



Since mid-2016, the headline unemployment total has been falling – a data point measured by the household-based Labour Force Survey, which includes unemployed people who aren’t claiming benefits. But the claimant unemployment count, which includes those currently receiving Jobseekers Allowance and those on Universal Credit who are expected to work, has steadily increased. In the year to March 2018, it grew by 9% or 73,200 to reach a total of 890,500 claimants.

This increase has been most marked in the areas where Universal Credit has been implemented, and even more so in “full digital service” areas. In the relatively small number of jobcentres where the full service had been implemented longest, before 2016, the claimant count was 38% higher in March 2018 than it had been a year earlier, an increase that wasn’t experienced by those jobcentres where the full service had not yet been implemented. While the final trend is not certain, an analysis by the Learning and Work Institute suggests it’s plausible that the number of unemployed claimants could double to 1.5m by the end of 2020. Yet the DWP and jobcentres have only a third of the resources and staffing that they had in 2012, the last time the claimant count stood at that total.

Jobcentre network as at 2016 and number of unemployed claimants accessing service



Proposed Jobcentre network (mostly implemented now)

Frances Ryan of the Guardian said "Shutting down jobcentres is the austerity era’s most underhand cut yet. Protests about one north London closure are just a drop in the ocean. One in 10 jobcentres will be cut over the next year". https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/02/shutting-down-jobcentres-austerity-underhand-cut

535 Libraries closed
The figure of 535 is intentionally on the low side to ensure that the figure is not xxaggerated. It is likely to be much higher by now (June 2018). Many libraries that were closed by councils were then re-opened by voluntary organisations. 525 libraries had closed by 2016, with a further 111 closures planned for the year.

Spending on public libraries in the UK Overview CIPFA are the recognised source of official information on public libraries. CIPFA public library comparators are free, publicly available and give a detailed breakdown per city or regions.

“According to CIPFA’s annual library survey, the squeeze on council funding continues to take its toll on libraries, as spending, paid staff and branches declined again last year (2016/17), for the 7th year running. During 2016/17 total expenditure on council-run libraries fell by £66m, paid staff numbers fell by 5% (869) and there are 105 fewer libraries During the same time period visits to libraries fell by 3%, which adds to a 14% decline over five years. Whilst library resources continued to bear the brunt of austerity, the support libraries received to fill resource gaps rose in 2016/7 by 6%, this includes specific grants from the government and other bodies. During the same period, volunteer numbers increased by 8%, 43% since 2012.” | CIPFA December 2017.

Closures
There are four areas - Sefton in Merseyside; Brent in north London, Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland - where more than half the libraries have closed since 2010, either buildings, mobile or both. The below table shows number of libraries closed in the period 2010 to March 2016. The data was collected by the BBC via a freedom of information request. Of the 525 libraries closed a number moved in to the voluntary sector. A further 111 libraries were identified for closure in 2016 at the time this data was compiled.

The number of paid staff in libraries fell from 31,977 in 2010 to 24,044 now, a drop of 7,933 (25%) for the 182 library authorities that provided comparable data, while the slack was taken up by 15,000 volunteers.

One of the impacts of libraries moving into the voluntary sector is that they are reliant on council grants to continue. These grants are uncertain as councils face further tightening of their budgets going forward. Public Library News keeps a list of libraries closed, although the list may not be comprehensive as some closures are not known.

Further to closures, more libraries are moving to a limited service to cut costs. The image below shows the number of libraries that open more than 10 hours per week and how the number has dropped during the last 10 years.

Libraries open less than 10 hours per week

Spending
The figures below show a drop in spending of 38.6% from its peak in 2009/10 if one takes in to account inflation. This is likely to be an exaggeration, however, as spending on staff salaries has been frozen (or nearly so: it has been 1% the year before last. 2% this) for the last five years and staffing represents a large percentage of overall library costs. If one ignores inflation completely, the decline from peak is more than halved at 18%. The true answer will likely be somewhere between the two figures. The figures are taken from the official Cipfa statistics.



Gov.uk (September 2017). “In 2016/17, 34.0% of adults had used a public library service in the 12 months prior to interview. This is significantly lower than in 2005/06 (48.2%) but similar to 2015/16 (33.4%).”

1000 Sure Start centres closed
Sure Start was created and developed as a way of improving the educational and life chances of socially and economically disadvantaged children. The centres offered families access to services including childcare, healthcare, parenting classes, job skills and playgroups.

By 2010, there were 3,600 centres in the UK. Before that year’s general election, the Conservative leader at the time, David Cameron, promised to protect funding for Sure Start, but this pledge quickly evaporated amid swingeing cuts to local authority budgets.

Over the next seven years, early years provision bore the brunt of cuts to children’s services. According to a study carried out by the National Audit Office, released in March 2018, Sure Start budgets in England were reduced by £763m (50%) between 2010 and 2017, as councils focused scarce funds on meeting an explosion in demand for child protection services.

According to the Sutton Trust, an education and social mobility foundation, a lack of clarity in how individual centres are identified and changes are reported means official figures of 500 closures since 2010 are likely to be an underestimate. According to study carried out by Sutton Trust research, the number of closures are 30%, not 14% as reported by the government, with closures more likely exceeding 1000 centres.

After 2010, the budget for Sure Start was no longer ring-fenced, but merged with other programmes. By 2013, national guidance on the ‘core purpose’ of children’s centres shifted focus to targeting ‘high need’ families, rather than open access to universal services.


 * The national database recorded a 14% drop in centre numbers between 2009 and October 2017. However, there is no clear definition of a ‘children’s centre’ and therefore many closures announced locally were not yet reflected in the database: our survey showed a 16% drop. If we only count ‘registered centres’, the drop since 2009 was more than 30%, suggesting that more than 1,000 centres nationally might have closed.
 * By 2017, sixteen authorities closing 50% or more of their centres accounted for 55% of the total number of closures nationally. Six authorities (West Berkshire, Camden, Stockport, Bromley, Oxfordshire and Staffordshire) had closed more than 70% of their centres. Despite this reduction, the proportion of centres in the 30% most disadvantaged areas remained constant from 2009 to 2017 at just over 50%. So, numbers dropped but the focus on disadvantaged areas remained.
 * More centres operate on a part-time basis only and the number of services has fallen. While most centres still offer open access services to families of all backgrounds, these have been reduced, restricted to fewer centres or to fewer sessions. Six out of ten local authorities reported most centres were open full-time; but few or none were open full-time in almost one in five authorities. Reduced services were reported by 55% of local authorities, with only 35% providing a range of ten or more services.
 * Financial pressures came top in 84% of local authorities as a principal driver of change in recent years. This financial squeeze since the removal of ring-fencing is intensifying, with 69% of authorities reporting a budget decrease in the last two years.
 * Change of focus’ came a close second (80%) as a driver of change. This was not just a move towards greater targeting of individual high need families and away from open access. It was also a way of integrating children’s centres into a wider package of ‘early help’ as part of local teams with a much wider age range (0-19), with more than 40% of authorities extending the age range to include school age children.
 * Changed national and local priorities have played a part. The suspension of Ofsted inspections and the lack of any national guidance since 2013 on the purpose of children’s centres were seen in our survey as reducing the importance of children’s centres. The effect was to reduce the strength of children’s centres in local authority priorities.

21,000 Police officers lost
There are 46,000 less police, including civilian roles, now than when the Tories came to power

Public Sector Cuts References


Jobcentre References


Library References


Sure Start References


Schools References
