(Reuters) - Liverpool City Council said on Thursday it was withdrawing from Prime Minister David Cameron's flagship Big Society project after losing 100 million pounds of central government funding.
Analysts said the council's decision was embarrassing but not fatal for the scheme, which Cameron has described as his "great passion" and a new type of politics amounting to the biggest redistribution of power in modern times.
Liverpool, controlled by the opposition Labour party, was one of four pilot authorities for the policy which aims to decentralise power and expand the voluntary sector.
Critics say the programme is a smokescreen for public spending cuts that the government is pushing through to tackle a record budget deficit.
Liverpool City Council leader Joe Anderson told Cameron in a letter the authority was pulling out of the scheme after losing 100 million pounds of funding that would have been spent on helping the voluntary sector tackle deprivation.
"How can the city council support the Big Society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups?" Anderson said.
"I have therefore come to the conclusion that Liverpool City Council can no longer support the Big Society initiative, as a direct consequence of your funding decisions," he added.
Last week the council said 1,500 jobs would be cut to meet a 141 million pound reduction in spending over the next two years.
A spokesman for Cameron said the government was examining the council's decision.
"We are looking into what the issues are and whether there were particular barriers and problems, and seeing if there is anything we can do to unlock that," the spokesman said.
Tony Travers, an expert on local government at the London School of Economics, said public spending reductions meant councils would end up cutting support for the kind of voluntary bodies championed by the Big Society programme.
"However well intentioned the Big Society is, cuts to public expenditure undermine it. And this is just a physical manifestation of that problem," Travers told Reuters.
Labour said Liverpool's withdrawal showed the project was imploding. The government has struggled to explain the policy to the public, with 63 percent in a recent YouGov opinion poll saying they didn't understand what "Big Society" meant.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/03/uk-britain-bigsociety-idUKTRE7127KK20110203
Analysts said the council's decision was embarrassing but not fatal for the scheme, which Cameron has described as his "great passion" and a new type of politics amounting to the biggest redistribution of power in modern times.
Liverpool, controlled by the opposition Labour party, was one of four pilot authorities for the policy which aims to decentralise power and expand the voluntary sector.
Critics say the programme is a smokescreen for public spending cuts that the government is pushing through to tackle a record budget deficit.
Liverpool City Council leader Joe Anderson told Cameron in a letter the authority was pulling out of the scheme after losing 100 million pounds of funding that would have been spent on helping the voluntary sector tackle deprivation.
"How can the city council support the Big Society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups?" Anderson said.
"I have therefore come to the conclusion that Liverpool City Council can no longer support the Big Society initiative, as a direct consequence of your funding decisions," he added.
Last week the council said 1,500 jobs would be cut to meet a 141 million pound reduction in spending over the next two years.
A spokesman for Cameron said the government was examining the council's decision.
"We are looking into what the issues are and whether there were particular barriers and problems, and seeing if there is anything we can do to unlock that," the spokesman said.
Tony Travers, an expert on local government at the London School of Economics, said public spending reductions meant councils would end up cutting support for the kind of voluntary bodies championed by the Big Society programme.
"However well intentioned the Big Society is, cuts to public expenditure undermine it. And this is just a physical manifestation of that problem," Travers told Reuters.
Labour said Liverpool's withdrawal showed the project was imploding. The government has struggled to explain the policy to the public, with 63 percent in a recent YouGov opinion poll saying they didn't understand what "Big Society" meant.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/03/uk-britain-bigsociety-idUKTRE7127KK20110203
