• ON Wednesday Cllr Sian Berry and I joined Green Party co-Leader Caroline Lucas to call on the government to restore the savage cuts to local authority budgets since 2010.

We handed in a letter to the Treasury ahead of the spring statement, listing some of the devastating impacts of Tory-induced austerity.

Sadly, included in the list was Camden Council, which has taken £76million out of its annual budgets over the past four years.

Most of the spending reductions have come from slicing bits out here and there, but some services have been hit particularly hard.

These include £3.2million of cuts to early years (including closing two children’s centres), and major reductions in adult social care, youth services, libraries and community centres.

Camden is one of the most unequal parts of Britain, encompassing some of the richest and poorest in society.

The council’s own figures show how problems such as ill health, obesity and shortened life expectancy are concentrated in the borough’s least affluent neighbourhoods.

The council isn’t responsible for Tory attacks on local government. But it is responsible for ensuring that those attacks don’t fall on the most vulnerable.

Council leaders should be more actively confronting the Whitehall decision-makers on residents’ behalf.

It should also try harder not to waste money on badly planned or executed projects, such as dangerous cladding at Chalcots, which led to costly evacuation of residents and emergency repairs, and the various estate redevelopments, which are not providing sufficient numbers of new council homes or revenue.

May’s local elections are an opportunity for voters to bring more political diversity into the council, to help the Labour leadership make the right choices and challenge them where they go wrong. Camden Greens stand ready to contribute.

DEE SEARLE
Co-Chair
Camden Green Party