'WE only have to look at the bleak state of local government finances at Devon County Council to see how the Conservative Party has failed on both a local and national level, with the authority having to cut approximately £75m from expected spending this year and then to make another £75m in savings next year.

Despite the supposed claim a Conservative-run council would have influence with the national party we can see in the Autumn Statement just delivered that they have no ability whatsoever to institute change, the begging of countless Tory authorities seeing no help coming bar an ability to increase council tax by another percent or two.

Of course, councillors have always known their fellow Conservatives were never going to help, what with their own budget book year after year pointing at the cutting of the central government provided Revenue Support Grant from £160m to £0m and with the much promised 100% retention of business rates gone walkabout.

If there was ever a moment that proved the age-old line about the Conservatives being the party of sound money to be a falsehood then now is surely that time. It’s also time they gave up the charade their national peers were ‘fixing the roof while the sun is shining’.

Unlike the current Tory government, Labour is serious about local government and committed to providing the money and power to local areas to deliver the levelling up agenda.

As Lisa Nandy MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, Communities & Local Government, has stressed, the need to rebalance the power and wealth of this country is urgent.

Labour’s local leaders see empowering local areas through devolution as especially crucial to their future growth and prosperity. Local councils are in fact seen as the “building blocks” of devolution.

Pivotal to genuine devolution are funding models that are sustained and predictable. One potential solution is locales having the power to introduce tourist taxes. Another is devolving powers to councils to retain 1 per cent of basic income tax revenue to fund local services.

A key issue for Labour is, however, that as Devon’s plight vividly demonstrates the current system is anything but sustained or predictable.

Bidding for central government funding is seen as especially problematic, pitting localities against each other and in the writing up of bids using up valuable but finite resources.