As county council services in Newtown and throughout Montgomeryshire continue to be affected by cuts made by savings needed to balance the books, Montgomeryshire's AM and MP have called on the Welsh Government to provide fair funding for the county.
Russell George AM and Glyn Davies MP say the rural authority is being hit harder than urban areas and the government needs to be fairer to ensure funding is available for vital services in the area.
Rural councils including Powys, Ceredigion, Monmouthshire and Pembrokeshire are among those that have received a larger decrease in funding from the Welsh Government than councils in urban areas of Wales.
Speaking in a debate on council funding in the National Assembly for Wales Mr George said: “The Welsh Government continues to ignore the needs of rural mid Wales.
“We need wholesale reform of the local government funding formula which properly takes into account the challenges of delivering vital public services over large rural areas like Mid Wales.
“The funding settlement is particularly challenging for rural authorities like Powys, which received the largest cut last year and this is proposed to be repeated again this year.”
“As a result of the Liberal Democrats’ support for the Welsh Government’s budget, the settlement means that residents across the whole of Powys will again suffer a large reduction on their Council’s finances, as has been the case for the last eight years."
Powys County Council has to find a further £7.7 million worth of savings, in addition to the £70 million it needs to find by 2020. In the next financial year, it has to find savings of £16 million.
Mr George went on to say: “The unfair funding settlement means that we are now seeing the local authority in Powys proposing to close secondary schools and expecting children to spend a large amount of their day on a bus rather than in school. This is clearly unacceptable.”
Caption: Russell George AM and Glyn Davies MP looking at the route of the Newtown bypass as they call on the Welsh Government to provide fair funding for Powys
