November 2: First schools, now police

LIKE those archaic rules on school funding which see Yorkshire pupils miss out to the tune of £40m a year, there is little sense to the formula used to allocate grants to police forces and which has prompted Tory Julia Mulligan, the police and crime commissioner for North Yorkshire, to threaten legal action against her own Government.

Her case is a strong one. On top of £20m of previously announced efficiency savings, North Yorkshire will lose a further £16m – and dozens more officers as a consequence – because of the application of a new funding formula that is based on the permanent population of each force area and does not recognise the significant costs that rural constabularies face each year in providing a safe environment for tourists.

Of course, Mrs Mulligan’s argument is unlikely to win universal support – Humberside’s budget remains unchanged, while South and West Yorkshire will see increases of £30m and £5.7m, respectively. It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge this, although the extra money in South Yorkshire is unlikely to offset the force’s planned cuts of £66m over the next four years because it is still incurring huge legal bills for the Rotherham sex abuse and Hillsborough inquiries.

Yet, once again, it provides added ammunition to those who contend that Yorkshire’s rural heartlands are being unfairly penalised. As Richmond MP Rishi Sunak wrote in The Yorkshire Post last month with regard to school funding: “If your local area was under-funded 10 years ago, it will continue to be. If your local schools got a raw deal back then, it most likely still will do now. What was a temporary fix is now long overdue for reform.”

The same principle applies to the police. Rural residents payn taxes too – and deserve policing commensurate with the needs of their area. Policing is not just about solving crime, it is also about deterring gangs who have targeted Yorkshire’s farms previously, because there is little likelihood of being apprehended. It’s high time that the Home Office recognised this reality.

Flooding facts: Insurers call for transparency

GIVEN the number of homes and businesses devastated by flooding in recent years, the Association of British Insurers is right to campaign for greater public awareness about the issue and to call for property websites to introduce a traffic light-style warnings so prospective purchasers can assess the risk for themselves. This, says the ABI, is just as important as the details provided on school catchment areas and transport links.

However, today’s recommendation is also another reminder that planners, both locally and nationally, need to do far more to minimise the impact of flooding so the authorities concerned are spared a far greater bill in the future. Though the risks facing properties close to the East Coast, or those located within the catchment area of this county’s rivers, are historic and well-documented, the threat posed by surface water, as a result of inadequate drainage, should not be under-estimated.

Yet, given that today’s population levels could not have been foreseen when the Victorians built the infrastructure serving Yorkshire’s towns and cities, local councils must now ‘flood-proof’ all future planning applications, large and small, being granting consent. Not only does this need to take account of the flooding risk, but it also needs to assess the capacity of water outlets in the vicinity so they, too, do not become overwhelmed and thereby increase the threat that is posed to homeowners.

York’s success: City is key to county’s prosperity

with yorkshire’s devolution settlement still largely unresolved, and so much of the recent political focus on the economic empowerment of the city-regions, it would be shortsighted if this process did not acknowledge new research showing that the number of start-up businesses being created in York is exceeding the national average by a significant margin.

Although this dynamism is being attributed to the presence of two leading universities and good transport links to London, the ripple effect of York’s rising prosperity stretches far beyond the outer extremities of this Roman city and demonstrates the need for this county’s new governance arrangements to reflect this significant success story.

The future prospects of York and Yorkshire are mutually dependent, a point overlooked by the five Labour-led councils in the West Riding who remain reluctant to work with their counterparts elsewhere.

They should not be.