Ten Percent Increase in Council Tax! Cuts in Services.
The cabinet meeting on January 9th illustrates just how far this council has fallen. In this article we outline the plans Newham has to dig itself out of the hole it created.
The papers were released late on December 24th, 2024. We can only suppose that they were released on the 24th because no-one would be at work to release them on the 25th!
The people paying the cost will be the residents of Newham. This debacle is brought to you courtesy of the ‘stellar’ political team at the head of Newham’s finances, Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz and Cllr Zulfiqar Ali.
The good news is that the officers have managed to reduce the budget gap from the projected £175 million by the end of 2027-28. The bad news is that the gap will still be £157 million.
By cutting £79 million in services they can get the gap to £51m in 2025/26 and a mere £78m by the 2027/28.
This can be further reduced by hiking council tax by 10% instead of 4.99% as was originally planned. By the end of her term in office, Mayor Fiaz will have raised council tax by 40%. That must be a record, though not necessarily one to be proud of. This still has to be agreed by the secretary of state, one Angela Raynor, so that should be ok.
In 2018-19 council tax on a Band D property in Newham would cost £1259.00 annually. According to the Standard, in 2025 it will rise to £1724.00.
Apparently, these proposals are popular with local people. “They also reflect the priorities expressed by local residents through our engagement with them.” You have got to give the council 10 out of 10 for chutzpah.
We discover that these cuts are not the result of six years of poor management, nor profligate spending on vanity projects. Cuts and tax hikes are because, “This all aligns with the new Government’s plans to reform and transform public services to fix a broken system that is failing people and communities and where often taxpayers’ money has been squandered because partial fixes and not dealing with the root causes has not worked. We want to achieve outcomes that transforms people’s lives so that they can get on in live with their families and loved ones.”
In short, this is how they will fleece some more money from and cut services to residents:
Increase fees and charges, (£7m)
“Grant refocussing” will save £250k in year 1.
Adult social Care can look forward to £7m in cuts over three years.
The modifications to the council tax reduction scheme will save £2.9m
“Redesign” of the children’s centres (read cut the number of) will save £400k
Cutting six (FTE) staff from Finance and HR (but not the mayor’s bloated office establishment) will save £300k
“Flexible use” of the Transformation Fund, (whatever that means), will save £600k
£100k will be saved by “centralising transformation resources from across directorates and consolidating work”. Or put another way, two or three staff are set to go.
There will be “£150k savings from ICT contracts through renegotiation and procurement”. Some of these savings seem just a little speculative.
There are smallish savings proposed by reducing the staff in Marketing, Communications and Policy, but again, not the mayor’s office.
£1.6m is set to go from the Youth Empowerment Service
In what appears to be an exercise in creative accounting, there is a plan to “reconsider” how £2m of CIL/s106 money is spent. An unkind reading of this might suggest that Newham was planning to subsidise its own spending at the expense of schemes that the money was originally designated for.
The full paper is available here.
So, after months of denial and doublespeak, the news is now out. Newham needs exceptional support from the government to avoid bankruptcy.
In short, what this means for Newham is.
Ten percent hike in council tax,
Selling off any assets in order to pay the bills,
Cuts in services and therefore redundancies.
Well done Mayor Fiaz. In six years, you have taken a well run local administration and created a basket case in which the residents are forced to foot the bills for your ineptitude.