Cuts to Stormont support for poorer councils disproportionately affects Catholics, unemployed, lone parents, country dwellers

These are the arguments contained in Derry City & Strabane District Council’s reply to a Department for Communities call for responses to an Equality Impact Assessment on its cuts to the Rates Support Grant.

RSG was established in 2008 to support the seven poorest councils in the North deliver services without undue rates impacts.

This year it has been cut by 45 per cent to just £4.9m in 2023/24 of which Derry City & Strabane will receive £982,450 (20.05%). The total pot was over £20m in 2008.

This week members of the Council Governance & Strategic Planning Committee agreed to send a provisional response to DfC, which had said its deadline for submissions was Wednesday.

In a report to the committee on Tuesday, Senior Economist Michael Gallagher, explained how the response noted how several groups would be adversely impacted by the cuts, including nationalists and Catholics.

“Our macro analysis of the Councils in receipt of the RSG finds that they are overwhelmingly of a Nationalist persuasion. Impact analysis from the Census 2021 illustrates that the Catholic population within the 7 impacted Councils is 51%.

"This compares to Catholic populations of 27% in those Councils who are not entitled to RSG and 42% across Northern Ireland as a whole...Furthermore, of the 805,151 Catholics across NI, 559,563 (69.5%) live in Council areas impacted by RSG cuts,” his report outlines.

The Council response further argues that the cuts have implications for several other groups under Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 which places a statutory duty on public bodies to address inequalities.

“Derry City and Strabane District Council has a number of further unique characteristics including S75 groups, unemployment levels, economic

inactivity, lone parents who will be disproportionately be affected by these cuts.

"Non-RSG Councils’ status quo will be maintained while RSG areas already identified as being unable to provide adequate services in the absence of this intervention will further suffer a loss of services,” the report adds.

People living in country areas will also be disproportionately affected by the cuts, the council has argued:

"An analysis by Council area of settlement statistics on this basis shows that the 7 Councils in receipt of Rates Support Grant comprise rural populations of 61.31%.

"This compares to rural populations of 19.74% in those Councils who are not entitled to Rates Support Grant and 43.76% across Northern Ireland.”

The Council has urged DfC to reverse the cuts.

The report states: “RSG must be restored to its original and required levels. Failure to do so will see ratepayers in less wealthy and more deprived and rural Council areas continue to pay higher and higher rates poundages as a proportion of their property values compared to those in more wealthy Council areas. This is not a fair outcome of the NI rating system.

"Should the required funding to restore the grant to its original and required levels not be provided, other critical and urgent measures must be considered including a complete reform of the rating system in Northern Ireland and a re-distribution of rates income on a fairer basis across Councils.”

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