Hackney Council passes 2015/16 budget with council tax frozen for tenth year

Hackney’s elected mayor, Jules Pipe. Photograph: Hackney Council

Hackney Council passed the borough’s 2015-2016 budget last night (25 February), including a freeze in council tax for the tenth year in a row.

Government-imposed cuts have resulted in modest reductions in funding for a number of the services provided by the local authority, most notably libraries, leisure facilities, and road works.

The council had the option of increasing council tax by up to two per cent to alleviate the impact of the cuts, but Mayor Jules Pipe argued that this would raise too small a sum (less than £400,000) for it to be a sensible move: “That is a quarter of one per cent of what the government has cut; it would make almost no difference”, averred the Mayor.

The proposed Conservative party budget amendment made provision for a reduction in council tax equivalent to £39.13 for an average (Band D) property, to be funded through cuts to the money allocated for parks, street maintenance and the introduction of 20mph zones, as well as removal of the council’s Enforcement Strategy Database for mobile working. The Tory plans also included measures to change the way the council is run and reduce the size of the Cabinet.

Introducing the Conservative proposals, Councillor Harvey Ozde said: “I can only draw on the words of Abraham Lincoln (beards of the world unite!): we would bring on government of the people, by the people, for the people and reinvent true democracy in Hackney”.

The Liberal Democrat budget proposals called for additional funds to be allocated to support community advice centres, voluntary community groups and courses in English as a second language. These were to be paid for by reducing funding for graffiti removal, street maintenance, ‘non-essential’ parks infrastructure and the Shoreditch Action Plan.

Speaking for the Liberal Democrats, Cllr Ian Sharer, said that these moves were designed to “protect the poorer members of our community” from Government-generated austerity measures.

Cllr Guy Nicholson, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, brought a measure of levity to the proceedings when used the metaphor of buses to describe the three parties’ budget proposals, framing the Labour budget as “on time, efficient, articulate, driven by Jules Pipe”, in contrast to the Conservative budget, which was, in his view, “probably breaking the speed limit, a bit rough around the edges” and the Liberal Democrat bus which was ‘sedate, same as it’s always been”.

Both minority group proposals were voted down by the council, and the Labour budget passed easily with only four votes against.