Comment: Budget cut sends wrong message

Feb 21 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

TOMORROW marks the six- month anniversary of the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Croxteth Park, a crime which touched the hearts not just of Merseyside, but of the whole nation.

Yet, despite the outpouring of emotion this terrible event produced, and the concerns raised over city gun crime, we reveal today that the Government has more than halved its contribution to community safety schemes in Liverpool.

The city’s Safer and Stronger Communities grant is being cut from £3.6m to £1.7m from April. This is money that is mainly used to fund "crime and grime" initiatives to tackle low-level crime and anti-social behaviour, which often rate highly among residents’ priorities.

Furthermore, an internal Liverpool council briefing paper, obtained by the Daily Post, has warned that recent work in reducing crime and anti-social behaviour is now under threat.

The document warns that planned in- vestment in the city’s CCTV network, contributions to help the police fund Police Community Support Officers and campaigns to clean up the city are under threat.

Many will agree with the sentiments of the council’s community safety leader Cllr Colin Eldridge, who said that impos- ing these cuts in a city that has suffered from dreadful crimes like the killing of young Rhys Jones was "ridiculous".

However, Rhys’s death, dreadful though it was, only represents the well-public- ised tip of the iceberg. Time and again, it is anti-social behaviour and vandalism that come out on top of residents’ con- cerns. While these activities are com- monly categorised as "low-level criminal activity", their impact on the quality of people’s lives is anything but low-level.

Unfortunately, in the twisted logic of Whitehall, it is funding such as the Safer and Stronger Communities grant which is often the first to be sacrificed.

Maybe the mandarins feel no-one will notice cutbacks to obscure-sounding grants such as this. However, they could not be more mistaken. It is a false economy that sends out entirely the wrong message.