There was a day this past week when it felt like many of Britain's many problems were brought out into the open for all to see.
A 🧵 on a day in the life of a failing state
A 🧵 on a day in the life of a failing state
It was a Wednesday and I was on a train, going through some emails. Suddenly a glut came through from the so-called Department of Levelling Up.
Each of these emails on each of these topics opened a window into just how broken this country has become.
Each of these emails on each of these topics opened a window into just how broken this country has become.
First up was rough sleeping. The data that arrived in my inbox showed that this is a soaring national crisis. Overall, rough sleeping is up by 27%. The, admittedly imperfect method of counting found that 4,000 people were rough sleeping in England on a single night last autumn.
That's a big jump from the year before and according to homelessness charities, it is more than double the estimated number that were sleeping rough when records began in 2010 - incidentally when the Conservatives came into power
Homelessness isn't just about those already sleeping rough, its also about those on the brink of it. The latest figures show that 109,000 households were in temporary accommodation between July and September last year, with more than 142,000 children in this perilous position.
Another truly startling statistic came from Generation Rent who calculated that in the 12 months leading up to last October, more people were made homeless than those who bought their first home.
It goes without saying that these desperate numbers represent a devastating failure of governance in a developed, wealthy nation. But it's far from the only failure.
As I continued to digest the deeply unpalatable homelessness and housing data that had landed in my inbox, a host of further emails arrived from the same government department. These emails concerned local councils.
The latest batch of alerts from the Department for Levelling Up concerned the many more councils that are now requiring government intervention or are turning to Whitehall for emergency funding as they fear bankruptcy.
We know that Birmingham is facing an existential crisis after effectively going bust, we know Nottingham has seen government commissioners brought in to help with its financial woes. But these were far from the only troubled local authorities mentioned in the latest publications
There were updates on government interventions in Woking, Slough and Thurrock, of a best value notice for Bradford and an external assurance review at Kensington and Chelsea.
On the next email came a list of 20 local authorities now desperately seeking emergency funding packages. These were councils of all political stripes in all regions of the country - from Cheshire to Somerset, from Middlesbrough to Eastbourne.
As I have written many times, there have been undoubted and egregious failures of governance at leadership at some of these local authorities. We only have to look at our own city of Liverpool to see the gross failures that can precede a government intervention.
But looking at these emails, at all of these local authorities in such dire financial situations and it is clear there is something much larger going on.
The Unison union calculated that between 2010 and 2020, the funding supplied to councils from central government was cut by a whopping £16 billion. Here in Liverpool the council has lost around half a billion pounds, equalling 65% of its previous funding streams.
At the same time, local authorities have faced soaring demands, largely in social care but in other key areas like the aforementioned homelessness. It feels after 14 years of the austerity agenda, we are now reaching the nadir of this crisis.
So with all this bad news flooding into my inbox I reminded myself that next week the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will deliver the government's budget. Surely he will want to address some of these enormous issues and the parlous state of our vital public services?
Well not quite. All the noises coming out of Whitehall are about how Mr Hunt is desperately looking for the fiscal headroom he needs - not to tackle these enormous social issues - but to be able to provide the tax cuts that the Tories believe could give them some electoral hope
Whether the dismal economic outlook will allow him to do that remains to be seen, but one thing we can be fairly certain of is that the huge problems facing our communities in terms of housing, homelessness and vital local services are nowhere near the top of his agenda.
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