In his speech moving Islington’s budget, Cllr Richard Greening set out the huge problems that the cuts have caused to the Council’s services to the community. 
Madam Mayor, this is the probably the toughest budget Islington has had to set since its formation.
The Tory Government supported by the Lib Dems has cut our grant by £40million in one year. That’s 12% of our general fund budget. This is the highest grant cut in London in spite of the fact that we are the fourth most deprived borough in the capital. At the same time, affluent areas like the London Borough of Richmond and Surrey County Council have had their government grant cut by less than 2%. So we are being asked to cut services here to protect affluent areas of the country.
Of course, the real cut is much higher than 12%.
In the real world outside Tory Central Office or its annex in Cowley St, inflation is running at over 5%. For example, we have to find
- £2million additional funding for child protection
- £2million to provide support for increased numbers of adults with learning disabilities.
- another million to support the borrowing required to fill the black hole we inherited in the capital programme.
- £1.4million extra to protect the freedom pass.
As a result we have to find over £50million savings next year – more than 16% (one sixth) of our entire general fund budget.
Not content with imposing the highest cuts on the most deprived communities, the government has also announced 45 changes to benefits and tax credits which will take £57 million from the poorest people in our borough, including those in work. Forcing thousands of people off incapacity benefit, cutting disability living allowance and threatening thousands more with the loss of their homes through multiple cuts in housing benefit.
At the same time, they have cut the grants, such as the Working Neighbourhood Fund which support voluntary advice agencies whose work is needed now more than ever. As a result of the budget voted through by Lib Dem MPs, we are seeing Citizens Advice Bureaux closing throughout the country.
The government sets great store by offering a council tax freeze. But at the same time they are forcing through a 7% rise in council rents while the Treasury pockets the money. This is a massive rise, well in excess of inflation and at a time when real incomes are not increasing.
We have little choice but to comply with both policies even though the unfairness to council tenants is evident.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg might claim that we are all in this together – but the reality Madam Mayor – is that they are cutting the poorest areas the most, they are cutting the income of the people on the lowest incomes the most and if they want to get off benefits and into work, the government is cutting the voluntary advice services which help them do this. And we have the Liberal Democrat party to thank for voting this through.
So what is our response to this attack? How can we protect the people we serve against these vicious policies with one sixth less resources than we had before?
First of all, we have identified massive efficiency savings within this budget. Over half of the 16% savings are efficiencies. That is three times more than the Gershon efficiency targets set by the last government and three times the annual efficiency saving achieved by the previous administration.
However, the depth of the cuts has meant that almost 7% of the savings are cuts to front line services – cuts which could have been avoided had Alistair Darling’s approach to reducing the national deficit been adopted.
Being efficient means protecting front line services and the staff who provide them. In this budget, we are deleting over 10% of posts in senior management roles and less than 5% of front line staff posts. We will save over £1million on senior management pay.
By any measure these are significant achievements and I’d like to thank Mike Curtis and his team, our staff, our partners and my fellow executive members and backbenchers for working so hard to make this possible. Over 200 staff will be leaving their current posts as a result of the government’s cuts and I would like to thank them in particular for their service to this borough and to wish them well for the future.
It is particularly regrettable that the frontloading of the cuts into the next financial year has meant that we are having to make more of our staff redundant rather than reducing our staff numbers through natural wastage. We have set aside £6million to pay for this – money which could have been spent on building new homes or refurbishing our primary schools.
Madam Mayor, simply being efficient is not enough. We also need to re-direct the remaining resources to reduce the impact of the government cuts on our residents. We’ve had to make some difficult choices and set clear priorities. In this budget we are aim to be on the side of residents by
- promoting fairness and protecting the people who most need it
- And: Keeping the promises we made in last year’s local elections.
I have already described the importance of advice services to help people cope with the cuts in benefits and the threats of unemployment, homelessness and debt.
At a time when Citizens Advice Bureaux are closing all over the country and the government is proposing to cut legal aid in these vital areas, we are opening a new CAB in April. We have also put in place an emergency funding package to restore some of the cuts in funding to our Law Centre, to Islington People’s Rights and to Disability Action in Islington.
We’re keeping our welfare rights team who do such a great job in increasing the income of our poorest residents.
And we have found an extra £1million rescue fund to protect the vital work of our voluntary sector.
We cannot undo all of the damage created by the Tory – Lib Dem government, but we have done our best to produce a budget which is fair.
- We are continuing to offer social care support for people with moderate needs. One of the few councils in the country still to do so.
- We are tackling the problem of dangerous dogs on our estates by hiring an extra dog warden.
- We are keeping open all of our children’s centres and libraries.
- And we will also find a way to keep the Sotheby Mews centre open, while reducing its costs.
Madam Mayor despite the massive cuts in our budget, we intend to keep the promises we made in last year’s Local Elections:
- We’ve established a Citizens Advice Bureau to give people the advice and help they need at a time of rapid change.
- We’ve retained the pensioners discount for over-65s in the Borough, giving something back to people who have worked their whole lives.
- And we’ve retained universal free school meals for Children in Islington, ensuring that Children in the Borough receive the best start in life.
So, much has been done, but there is more still to do.
Over each of the next three years the Lib-Dem Tory Government are threatening to cut our budget again, requiring us to find another £50million in savings.
We have taken out so much management cost in this budget, that the threat of further cuts to our front line services is now even greater.
We must campaign against these cuts. We have already seen the government back down on selling off the national forests and on one of the nastiest cuts to housing benefit.
I hope everyone here will join the protest events on 26th March and take the battle to the coalition partners and in particular the Liberal Democrats who opposed the Tories cuts strategy before the election and now support it.
In Islington, we will work even harder to tackle unfairness and inequality in our borough and protect our most vulnerable residents from this appalling government.
This budget is a first step towards that goal. We are protecting the services that people on low incomes value, we are making the council much more cost effective and we are keeping the promises we made to the electorate.
Islington has produced a budget that is on the side of ordinary people in our borough.
I move
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