While I was away (home to Jersey for a few days), an interesting thing happened at the county council.

Until recently, a large amount of the council’s money has come from the Government. It’s called the Revenue Support Grant or RSG.

The Government said a couple of years ago that this would reduce to zero over the next few years. But to help councils plan effectively, the Government also said it would offer councils a four-year financial settlement, if they wanted to accept it, so that they would know clearly where they stood until 2020.

In December last year, the Government said that this four year settlement would mean a grant of £15.31M this year, £3.92M next year, and £0 after that.

However, late last month the Government changed its mind and said that Cambridgeshire’s grant would be minus £7.17M for 2019/20. In other words, the county council would have to pay the Government over £7M of local taxpayers’ money.

And the county council would have to decide whether to take this settlement or leave it, by last Friday. If it didn’t take it, the Government suggested, any settlement that replaced it would be even less favourable.

That’s a week to make a significant decision affecting important services in Cambridgeshire for years to come. With a threat of worse to follow if the council doesn’t do what it’s told.

A senior county council committee met last Thursday to discuss what to do.

• The Conservatives proposed to accept the settlement and hand over the £7.17M, but then withdrew this proposal.
• Liberal Democrats, seconded by Labour, proposed to refuse the settlement but argue that Cambridgeshire shouldn’t be given a worse settlement as a result, because of the county’s underfunding and its importance to the growth of the economy generally. This proposal was agreed by 9 votes to 8. (The Conservatives were the eight).

So the Government may ‘punish’ us for not handing over local taxpayers’ money nicely. We don’t know yet. But that doesn’t sound like a fair or sensible way for the Government to do business. And the Government certainly shouldn’t be telling the council to smile nicely while it’s being bullied into handing over your money.