BRITAIN’S SOCIAL SERVICES

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 February 1937, Page 7

BRITAIN’S SOCIAL SERVICES

ALLOCATION OF GRANT. [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS] RUGBY, February 17. A White Paper has been published containing proposals which have emerged from an expert investigation of the working of the formula under which the annual Exchequer grant of £44,000,000 is distributed among local authorities in England and Wales towards the provision of health services. The total of the grant is to be increased to about £49,000,000, and under the revised formula, which gives special weight to the amount of local unemployment and factors such as sparse population, a larger share of the increased grant will be allocated to the poorer areas, where the need for social services is usually greatest, while they are least able to pay for them. The revision of the block front system was undertaken because of the great inequalities of rates in the different localities, attributable to the incidence of unemployment and other causes. This frequently resulted in the discouragement of industry in those areas when' its recovery was most important. Among striking examples in the White Paper of the effects of the redistribution is an estimated gain of £51,000 yearly to Merthyr Tydfil, a derelict mining village in South Wales, representing an equivalent of 5/- in the £on local rates. Durham. Glamorgan, and Monmouth among them will gain something like £650,000 a year. In London, Bermondsey, a poor borough, will gain the equivalent of more than 1 /- in the £ on rates.