New MP for Macclesfield Tim Roca has said that tackling funding inequality for schools is going to be one of his main priorities.
He told the “Oh God What Now” podcast: “It’s got some of the lowest funded schools in the entire country. The national funding formula really screws over places like Macclesfield.
“We’ve got great schools, brilliant teachers. I just want to make sure they get the money that they deserve to deliver the education they want to.”
The issue is a long-standing one; Cheshire East is one of the worst funded local authorities in England, and last year there was warning that several schools in Cheshire East would go into the red this year unless the Government increased funding.
Chair Coun Kath Flavell told the Cheshire East Council Children and Families Committee last year that she had visited a number of schools and many were saying they were managing for 2023, but in 2024 were going to go into the red.
She said: “This has nothing to do with Cheshire East Council distributing (grants), this is due to central government failing to support the schools.
“Unless we get significant investment in education, these schools are going to be struggling to buy pens and paper, which is what they’ve told us.”
Mr Roca told the podcast that the issue was still at the front of people’s mind.
“School funding … it’s the stuff on the doorstep. Every MP during the election campaign (met) people who were incredibly frustrated with the neglect of local public services, their council being underfunded, the roads being a mess.
“But there’s a very specific issue about education funding. The more people I speak to, I understand it’s going to be quite difficult and it’s going to be a bit of a marathon trying to get movement on it.”
Devolution
Mr Roca was also asked about devolution.
There are plans for Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Warrington councils to join together in a bid to obtain funding from the Government for regional strategies, with many worried about the idea because of the debt that Warrington Council has.
Supporters of the scheme say the councils will not merge, so Warrington’s debt will remain Warrington’s debt.
Mr Roker told the podcast: “Devolution is on the agenda because Cheshire might be one of the places where the Government decides to look for to create a combined authority.
“We’ve seen Manchester and Merseyside plough ahead with the powers that they’ve got and we feel a little bit left behind in Cheshire, so there’s an opportunity there for more devolution and more powers – and hopefully some more money as well.
“I’ll be wanting to push that agenda.”
He said there would be tension between those wanting to get the benefits of devolution and decentralisation, and letting people innovate and develop services, and those at central government who held the purse-strings and would carry the can if things went wrong.
“There’s always going to be a tension between the Treasury saying, ‘well, we like the theory of giving away power and letting local government have a bit more control’, but also ‘we can’t possibly let go of any of the fiscal levers, or … if we take off the cap on council tax rises, it is just going to blow back on us.”
Mr Roca was born and brought up in the Macclesfield area, and went to London for work. He previously sat on Westminster City Council.
Offices
He said that since the election, MPs had been working hard to get their offices established.
“You’ve got 400 Labour MPs, half of them are brand new,” he said.
“What they’ve been focused on – which will disappoint people, perhaps – is getting the basics sorted, getting their offices running, caseworkers recruited and employed, answering the hundreds of emails and letters that have been coming through over the summer, and trying to catch a break if they can after a general election campaign.
“When we arrived on that Monday after the general election, the feeling was incredibly buoyant after 14 years, and then quickly, very quickly, people were running around trying to get things set up, working really, really hard on behalf of their constituents.”
He added: “People want to excel, and the atmosphere, I think, among Labour backbenchers is really positive.”
He said the last few years of Tory rule had a “psychodrama”.
“This is what characterized the last four or five years of politics, at a time when really what should have been done was proper policymaking. That is partly why some of (Sir Keir) Starmer’s argument about having to make all these difficult decisions now is so convincing, because everybody is aware that there was so much navel-gazing going on at the expense of actually governing.”
