Leader – Mayor Pipe’s policy is Pickles’ dream

So, the worst is behind us. George Osborne’s cuts have bitten and the economy is on the up.

Well, not exactly.

When it comes to local government, the worst is unfortunately yet to come.

Hackney Council will next month set its budget for 2014-15. Cuts – and uproar from the Left – can be expected.

Our Labour-run council has protested at local government secretary Eric Pickles’ parsimony.

At last month’s full council meeting Councillor Philip Glanville said Pickles’ financial slimming regime had held up improvements to housing under the Decent Homes scheme – but the council’s actions are inconsistent with such tub-thumping.

Hackney’s political leader is, for example, implementing populist Tory tax policies – an odd state of affairs given our borough’s status as a safer-than-safe red rosette stronghold.

Council tax in Hackney is being  frozen for the ninth consecutive year, and Mayor Jules Pipe’s continuing failure to raise it in line with inflation means it has fallen in real terms. Other Labour-run councils, and even some Conservative administrations, are proposing modest council tax rises to shore up services and mitigate the worst of the cuts.

It is rumoured that as many as three quarters of county councils and a third of other councils have indicated they plan to increase council tax in a show of frustration with the government’s seeming desire to eviscerate Town Halls.

Meanwhile, government cuts to means-tested benefit means some of the poorest households will now have to pay council tax (thousands of households in Hackney are currently exempt). Councils have the right to raise council tax by up to two per cent without holding a referendum, but Green-led Brighton Council has decided it needs to raise council tax even more and looks set to hold a referendum on a tax increase.

However, Mayor Pipe seems fixated on a rolling freeze on council tax. He evidently sees this policy as a vote-winner and a measure of his success.

The bottom line is this: those who can pay (i.e. everyone but the poorest) should pay, and local councils should be able to raise money for local services.

Will Hackney Council see sense and reconsider its peculiar stance?