The Know Daily - Wednesday 6 March 2024

_{Read in 5m 19s ∙ Listening to Lovejoy ∙}

Adejoké Bakare recently became the first black female chef in the UK to win a Michelin star for her restaurant Chishuru, which specialises in modern West African cuisine (it’s definitely one for the bucket list 👀). “We make our own rules, we answer to no one, we do our own thing,” said Bakare of being an independent restaurateur. “As a black female chef I’m not totally sure I could have done it any other way.”

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💰 Birmingham budget cuts

Councillors in Birmingham yesterday approved what are thought to be the biggest budget cuts in local authority history.

Tell me more.
The Labour-run council - the largest local authority in Europe - met on Tuesday afternoon to debate and vote on £300m in cuts. Up to 600 council jobs are set to be axed, along with funding for social care, highways maintenance and the arts. Libraries will be closed, bin collections will be reduced to fortnightly and streetlights will be dimmed. 

Council tax will also increase by around 21% over the next two years, equivalent to a rise of around £280 on a typical Band A property, said The Independent.

That’s a lot.
Yep. Addressing the council chamber, leader John Cotton said he “unreservedly apologised” for the “unprecedented scale” of the cuts, adding: “I am under no illusion what this budget will mean for our communities”.

How did we get here?
In September, Birmingham city council issued a section 114 notice, which means it effectively declared itself bankrupt. This was largely attributed to a £700m liability for equal pay claims - but writing in The Conservation, James Brackley argues that the “disastrous implementation” of a new IT system has been overlooked as a key factor in the council being forced to declare effective bankruptcy.

And while leader John Cotton told the council chamber that he took responsibility for “Birmingham-specific problems”, he has also blamed a “national crisis in local government finance” caused by “a combination of austerity and underfunding”. 

So what’s the bigger picture?
Councils’ spending power has “plummeted” since austerity was imposed in 2010, said The Independent. The vote in Birmingham came a day after councillors in Nottingham approved “wide-ranging” budget cuts, with nearly 1 in 5 council leaders in England saying they were likely to declare effective bankruptcy in the next 15 months.