Derry City and Strabane Council may join legal action against a Stormont department

Derry City and Strabane Council is considering joining Mid Ulster District Council in taking legal action against the Department for Communities over cuts to the rate support grant.

The Rate Support Grant (RSG) is granted to seven councils in the most deprived areas to help pay for services.

DCSDC is entitled to 20% of the grant, which once stood at £20m but has now been reduced to £4.9m. It is now proposed that the council will receive £982k, substantially less than the original £4m.

The Council is now using its reserves to plug a £1.25m gap in its budget.

Sinn Féin Councillor Conor Heaney said DCSDC is actively exploring the possibility of joining the legal action.

“At the last Governance and Strategic Planning Committee I proposed that we join the judicial review as a council to increase the pressure and try to get that decision overturned,” he said.

“To join a legal action you have to bring additional information and evidence to the table and council officers are putting that together.

“There are already a lot of particular circumstances here in Derry and Strabane that would make this cut have an extreme impact on the services and ratepayers in the city.”

The other impacted council areas are Causeway Coast and Glens, Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon, Mid and East Antrim, Newry, Mourne and Down, Fermanagh and Omagh.

Cllr Heaney says addressing the most recent cut isn't enough – it also needs to be increased.

“The Rate Support Grant has been cut and cut and cut over the last number of years. This further cut will have real impacts on the services that the council can deliver.

“We're already in a really difficult situation with rising costs across the board to keep the rates at as low as possible for ratepayers. With this further cut now it makes that job much, much harder.”

Derry City and Strabane council was previously presented with a report that said the repercussions of the RSG cuts will fall disproportionately on Catholics.

Of the 805k Catholics in Northern Ireland, 559,563 (69.5%) live in council areas that are affected by cuts.

“Impact analysis from the Census 2021 illustrates that the Catholic population within the seven impacted councils is 51%,” the report stated.

“This compares to Catholic populations of 27% in those councils who are not entitled to rates support grant and 42% across Northern Ireland as a whole.”

A spokesperson for DCSDC said it is very disappointed at the advised cuts to Rates Support Grant.

“If the grant was restored to its original and required levels, Council would be entitled to £4,109,649 as compared to the current proposed £982,450 allocation. This additional £3.127m would equate to a rates benefit for Council of 4.39% or alternatively would enable a further £48m of capital projects to be delivered,” the representative said.

“In the short term, until these processes are concluded, Council is having to fund the £1.25m budgetary pressure through utilisation of reserves.

“In the medium term as Council works towards setting its rate for 2024/25, if the reduction is maintained, this will inevitably result in either service reductions or rates increases or a combination of both.”

In addition to exploring the possibility of join the legal action, the Council has issued a ‘robust response’ to the Department for Communities about the cut. It hopes that this will result in the cut being reversed or reconsidered.