Empty kitty

East Devon District Council's Overview and Scrutiny committee met together yesterday to scrutinise the budget drawn up by East Devon officers.

After the officers had planned every absolutely crucial district council task, and pruned out any costs they could find to prune, the committees were left staring glumly at a full excel spreadsheet page in tiny font of items, as one of the Overview committee said, "not one of them frivolous", that simply cannot be funded.

There is nothing left to cut, yet the cuts keep from above coming. We are asking our officers and council staff to conjure the impossible from a magician's hat every single day. This unhealthy layering of Conservative rule at every level of government is producing some highly unintended consequences- our local authorities appear unable to robustly resist the unreasonable cuts being meted out to our local councils.

The councils themselves are simply unable to continue to offer the services they used to be able to. Where will this end? Something has to change.