Cherwell District Council Labour group leader Councillor Sean Woodcock reports astonishing scenes at Thursday’s Extraordinary meeting of the Council Executive.

CDC is facing a budget shortfall of £3.1 million due to the national Conservative government reneging on their promise to fully support local authorities during the coronavirus crisis, which has imposed twin blows of increased support service costs and greatly decreased income on councils (and this figure is dwarfed by the £64.6 million shortfall faced by the county council).

Labour have been calling for our elected MP, Victoria Prentis, to intervene on behalf of her constituents for months.  Councillor Woodcock challenged her about this on BBC Oxford on 23rd April:

More recently, at the start of this month Councillor Hussain wrote a heartfelt open letter to Ms Prentis.

Sadly Ms Prentis’ response has been to ignore all warnings. Her level of care for the services her constituents rely on has been defined by her inaction, even as the crisis grew ever more serious and immediate.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives on CDC’s ruling majority have studiously avoided any criticism of our MP, even as they admit the growing problems.  Here’s Conservative Councillor Nick Mawer describing the local government funding hole as a ‘financial apocalypse’ over a month ago (but subsequently clarifying that he nevertheless had full confidence in our MP, despite complete inaction on her part!):

Clearly for the Conservatives on CDC, party comes squarely before the needs of the people who elected them, even if behind the scenes they are privately frustrated at the lack of support from our MP.

Finally, at Thursday’s meeting, frustration boiled over. Conservative Councillor Ian Corkin laid into Ms Prentis’ lack of response, describing it as ‘infuriating’ that the best she can manage is a stock response, even to councillors in her own party.  “There is an existential threat to this authority and to others, and pointing out what has been done will not close [the funding] gap.  We need clarity, and we need commitment, and we need it fast, because if central government wants local government to step up in the way that it has done over the last few months, they had better start treating us better than second class citizens to be talked to in single syllable words.”

The video can be watched here, starting at 12:12. Update: Here’s a clip of the segment in question.

Councillor Woodcock gave us this statement:

“I welcome the intervention of Conservative District Councillors like Nick Mawer and Ian Corkin in calling for our MP to get off the fence and step up to the plate.

They’ve spoken of an “apocalypse” and “existential threat” to local services; because of the failure of national government to honour their previous commitments. They are absolutely right.”

The question remains if, even (finally) challenged by members of her own party, whether Ms Prentis will be roused to any sort of action.  For the sake of her constituents, we hope she will be able to produce better than yet another insulting stock response, but based on her past performance that unfortunately seems unlikely.