Cuts that squeeze the life out of Liverpool

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/22/cuts-that-squeeze-the-life-out-of-liverpool

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Your piece on the new threat to Liverpool’s remaining libraries is important (Liverpool likely to be forced into cutting more libraries, says mayor, 21 February). The scale of assault on public and civic life here shocks: £330m in cuts since Cameron and Clegg’s coalition government of 2010, with £90m to come, are figures which translate into massive numbers of unemployed people (including former council employees) and desolate landscapes of boarded-up libraries, closed-down day centres and nurseries, and unvisited vulnerable people. Liverpool city council’s director of adult social care, Samih Kalakeche, has resigned, saying: “Frankly, I can’t see social services surviving after two years. That’s the absolute maximum.” The central Conservative government is starving our city and others of essential funds.

Raising money through local council tax is futile – our base of council tax payers is low, with growing numbers of older people, and in any case could never compensate for the central government’s missing multimillions.

The selling off of our civic heritage of land and buildings, parks and libraries – and the jobs that went with them – is going curiously unreported. With a few exceptions (Aditya Chakrabortty and Polly Toynbee among them), the media’s single focus on Trump and Brexit misses a longer war on people’s daily lives and dignity.Natalie McKennaLiverpool

• Delaying the rise in business rates has made it worse, and we may still see the government ameliorating its effect (Time to fix toxic rates, 22 February). Far worse is the delay in rebanding council tax bands – still based on 1991 valuations. During the past 17 years many house improvements, conversions and annexes have escaped any additional rebanding. At a time of severe cutting of council services due to never-ending annual grant reductions, a fairer means of raising much-needed council revenue would be a revaluation of property prices so the greater burden falls on householders with the broadest shoulders.Barbara HawkinsGreat Ayton, North Yorkshire

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