Funding dilemma is a Christmas bombshell for councils

Unless they've buried their heads in the sand for the past three years, every single local authority has effectively had to accept falling budgets as a way of life.

This has been the year where austerity has really started to bite, with plans drawn up to shut or hive off museums, libraries and leisure centres.

Even that great pink and black box of delights in West Bromwich, The Public, which for years stood as a monument to the waste of public finances, finally shut its doors despite having arguably come into its own.

So with councils consulting on all the things they're planning to close/scale back/hive off next year, along comes the official confirmation of their grants for the next couple of years.

And as far as Wolverhampton City Council is concerned, it's a bombshell.

The £98 million of cuts planned has now had to be increased to £120m. The 1,000 jobs expected to be axed is now likely to be around 1,400.

That's a pretty rotten Christmas present for a lot of dedicated public servants.

To put it in perspective, that figure is exactly the same number of jobs being created at the end of 2014 by Jaguar Land Rover's new engine plant at the i54, which just so happens the biggest private investment in Wolverhampton for years.

Ian Parry, the Tory finance boss at Staffordshire County Council, says that any council that plans to just 'cut and shut' is heading for real trouble. They are going to have to change the way they have always done things.

One of the ways the coalition government is forcing them to do this is by dangling the offer of a grant to freeze the council tax at the same rates we have been paying since 2010.

But the grant isn't in line with inflation. That means councils are worse off than they would be had they just put the council tax up.

The temptation is certainly there this time. None of the Black Country boroughs are ruling it out.

To curb any talk of an inflation busting rise, the government will insist that any authority that wants to increase rates above two per cent must hold a referendum. And ministers know full well that the public are never going to vote to pay more council tax.

After three years of freezes it probably isn't unreasonable to be asked to pay a little bit more in council tax. Although, with all the cuts already endured, you might wonder if we're still getting the same services for our money.

Some would argue that councils have lived too large for too long, seeing increases in council tax as a divine right.

But it doesn't really seem fair to expect councils to put it to a vote if they want to raise the council tax. In many areas we go to the polls three years out of every four to vote for our elected councillors. One of the things many people look for in election promises is what they're going to do with the council tax.

If we don't like what they do, we can vote them out. We can campaign and lobby and then see if an opposition party will do things differently.

Having politicians in Westminster deciding the levels at which democratically elected councillors can set the council tax in their own boroughs makes me wonder: Don't they trust them to run local government? If not, then what are we paying for in the first place?