MONEY MATTERS

摘要

It's January, and we're all feeling a little light in the pocket - and thaf s certainly the case for most London boroughs. With a whopping 82% of the capital's councils falling below the grant floor, times are certainly tight Ealing, like many boroughs, has seen a large increase in economic migrants, and this places huge calls on our core services. In addition, I'm pleased to say our older people are living longer, but sadly, the Government's formula for calculating our grants didn't take this into account Like other authorities, we were pleased to learn that the schools' ICT grant was untouched this year. But, just when we thought we'd escaped the highway man, he came at us from another direction and pinched our pupil increases capital grant for building new classrooms, saying we would get the money to pay for our borrowing through our grant But ifs simply impossible for us to take advantage of this 'generous offer'.