I WOULD like to give a UKIP response to the recent Spending Review.

We welcome the two U-turns on tax credits and policing. Independent members, cross benchers in the House of Lords and web campaigns fought successfully against the government over reducing tax credits that currently keep people in work.

Removing them would have been a serious mistake and false economy.

The higher living wage may reduce the benefits bill but may instead cause people to be laid off.

Certainly it makes social care unaffordable.

Social care and public health needs to be protected in the same way as the NHS, since preventative care eases the burden of the NHS.

The ability to raise a separate ‘care tax’ of up to two per cent is welcomed and is reminiscent of the National Insurance tax.

This is in addition to the normal tax rises corresponding to increased demands and reducing funds from central government.

The Police and Crime Commissioner will breathe a huge sigh of relief over keeping the police budgets intact but it may be short-lived as savings from combining services are still required.

Police funding has been raised consistently by our Independent Police and Crime Commissioner since they find they already have the thinnest possible blue line – yet with added pressures of cybercrime and counter extremism work.

The windfall of the Office of Budget Responsibility giving a suddenly more generous prediction of economic growth of 2.4 per cent raised a handy extra few billion in predicted tax income.

This Spending Review banks on that.

The announcement that the longest period of rising debt in history is about to be reversed is only slightly undermined by the previous promises having failed to come to fruition.

The ‘elephant in the room’ remains the £1.5 trillion national debt that has been virtually ignored.

Our calls for more properly funded apprenticeships have been heard.

This Spending Review proposes the cost is picked up by the bigger employers, presumably the same ones who have had their corporate tax reduced.

UKIP’s call for more support of affordable housing has been heard with £2bn for affordable housing which goes a little way towards meeting the needs.

As house prices continue to rise, open to world markets, they become unaffordable to more people.

The increased Stamp Duty does little to encourage foreign buyers to actually let their properties at a price people can afford.

We require a proportion of new housing to be affordable, so perhaps this should be extended to rental properties. Could Capital Gains Tax be reinvested into affordable rents?

Extending the ‘right to buy’ to include housing associations is still to be funded by council’s sale of council homes – a self-defeating policy.

Certainly the handing of billions to private developers to build 400,000 homes would be far more effectively done by councils, matching school places and health facilities for the benefit of our communities.

Much of the increased spend is balanced by ‘efficiency savings’ still to be made. The NHS for example is planned a £20bn increase but with an unrealistic £22bn ‘efficiency’ saving at the same time.

Abolishing the uniform business rate gives councils the power to cut rates to make their areas more attractive to businesses which could lead to a race to see who can charge the least and for longest, making councils evermore unsustainable.

We welcome the fact that 600,000 of the smallest businesses have business rate relief for a further year.

All these reductions on business rates will coincide with the councils depending on that very same income for their survival.

In conclusion, despite the improvements in the forecast economic growth, the outlook for our councils is much the same with massive cuts still on the way.

We are at the tipping point and can take no more. The tide has got to change.

– Cllr Richard Leppington (UKIP). County and district councillor for Blakeney and Bream.