Unison members picket Monday’s cabinet meeting

Published: 18 December, 2014
by RICHARD OSLEY and WILLIAM McLENNAN

THE Town Hall last night (Wednesday) warned the public to brace themselves for £73million worth of cuts to spending, with a host of services facing the chop or marked reductions as the council tries to balance the books.

Senior Labour councillors signed off a financial strategy which will lead to cuts in every corner of the council and to uncertain futures for services such as libraries and anti-social behaviour patrols. Around 600 council jobs are under threat.

In turn, the Town Hall will press ahead with plans to fill the black hole in their coffers through advertising, a night-time economy levy on bars which stay open open past midnight, extra fees on facilities such as public toilets, and will campaign for a tourist tax on hotels in the borough.

The cabinet councillors said they had measured a “graph of doom” plotting Camden’s finances – and what they could expect from government grants  – for the coming years and warned that local government was hurtling to a stage where there would be no money to fund anything apart from core services that every council is required by law to provide.

Unison members picketed the Town Hall building before a cabinet meeting where branch secretary George Binette called for council reserves – savings – to be used to stave off redundancies, a plea rejected by Camden on the basis it would risk the future of building projects such as the modernisation of Parliament Hill School.

Mr Binette said from the protest: “It’s obscene that we are again contemplating cuts of this magnitude in the sixth richest country in the world. Blaming the government is a bit like a broken record. 

“They need to make some sort of stand. Frankly, signing a letter to the Observer on a Sunday in November against the cuts, is not enough. We cannot go on like this.”

He warned that Labour risked offering only “austerity lite” without a bold response to the slashing of local government grants. “To date Labour councillors have almost uniformly been the more or less reluctant executors of the Coalition’s will,” Mr Binette added, before demanding a “real fight” in response to settlements from Whitehall. 

Labour finance chief Councillor Theo Blackwell told last night’s cabinet meeting that the pain of the banking crisis had been “borne by those who had least to do with it” but that his party had tried to limit the hurt for Camden's most vulnerable.

He warned: “Camden’s ‘graph of doom’ predicts future spending. It estimates that if things don’t change Camden will have no money for anything other than street cleansing and recycling, adult social care and safeguarding children by 2021.”

“As Labour councillors we are in a particularly difficult position implementing cuts to public services we never wanted to,” he said. “But let's be clear the responsibility lies with George Osborne and the Tory/Lib Dem coalition.”

Conservative deputy leader Councillor Andrew Mennear told the meeting that if the argument turned political then people knew how the country had got into financial dire straits under a past Labour government due to “loose controls”.

 Cllr Mennear said too many of the proposed cuts to services had been “agreed in principle” without a fuller debate. “This is a take it or leave it list of cuts,” he said.

The Green Party repeated its call for a boroughwide referendum on raising council tax to help plug the gap, suggesting that there was a public appetite for paying a bit more to save services.

Highgate councillor Sian Berry added that there should be a  new tax on companies who provide parking spaces for more than two members of staff – therefore creating extra revenue by penalising polluters.

She said: “We have to take radical steps if we aren’t to see local services wither away and abandon our ethical commitments like paying a minimum wage.”

Cllr Blackwell added last night: “Do  you think at the end of austerity the Conservatives will pledge to put more money back into libraries or youth centres? No. The Conservatives have promised tax cuts over public spending funding.”