Council tax hike of three per cent voted through in Town Hall budget meeting

Hackney Town Hall

Hackney Council last night voted to raise council tax following severe cuts to local authority funding by the Conservative government. Residents’ tax bills will increase by three per cent from an average of £1,294 per year (£108 per month) to an annual charge of £1,329 (£111 per month) under the new rules.

The tax hike includes a social care precept of two per cent and a further one per cent to fund the costs of addressing homelessness, funding children’s services and maintaining other council activities.

Though this measure will yield the Town Hall an additional £2 million, the budget has also been obliged to absorb a £14 million government squeeze.

In his first such speech as mayor, Philip Glanville laid blame for the council’s budgetary woes squarely on Whitehall: “We’ve been very clear that the poorest in London and in Hackney should not bear the brunt of a problem they did not create”.

Despite the financial pressures experienced by the local authority, the 2017/18 budget includes provision for the construction of thousands of new council homes, a priority dear to Glanville’s heart.

The Labour mayor’s tax adjustments were opposed by both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat groups, the Tories demanding a slight cut in council tax and the Liberal Democrats asking for a further increase.

In their suggested amendment to the budget, the Conservatives proposed to reduce council tax by an average of £10 per annum by cutting spending on road maintenance, parks and the Shoreditch Action Plan. Commenting on the proposals, Conservative Councillor Simche Steinberger said “We’re putting this [budget amendment] forward in order to support residents and not make the tax so expensive for them.”

The Conservatives also rapped the Labour administration on the knuckles for splashing out an additional £3.5 million for further refurbishment and maintenance of the Town Hall. This expenditure alone represents nearly double the additional council tax local residents will have to fork out in the coming year.

The Liberal Democrats, by contrast, proposed a further one per cent increase in council tax (£11 per year on average), over and above the rise agreed by Labour. The additional funds were designed to pay grants to support voluntary schemes in the community, though the Liberal Democrats also argued for a reduction in the Shoreditch Action Plan budget and cancellation of plans to install CCTV in libraries.

Cllr Ian Sharer, speaking on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, said “our budget reflects small amounts to protect the poorest in our society. We have agreed (again) that the government’s austerity is far too deep and far too fast”.

The tax rise of three per cent was nevertheless voted through, together with the rest of the budget, on a solid majority by the Labour-dominated assembly. Only the four men on the opposition benches voted against.

Wide-ranging debate at the meeting touched on several aspects of the local economy, including the recent increase in business rates, which will lead to 370 local enterprises experiencing additional costs of over £10,000 per year. Speaking for the Conservatives, Cllr Simche Steinberger was unusually conciliatory, agreeing with the Labour group in lamenting the spike in business rates. This move led Cllr Guy Nicholson to thank his ‘comrades’ on the Tory benches amid calls of ‘join us’ from the Labour side.

Peace also broke out somewhat unexpectedly when Cllr Steinberger asked for cross-party discussion on future budgets while they are in the preparation stage, a suggestion to which Cllr Taylor (Cabinet Member for Finance and Corporate Services) readily assented.

There were points of disagreement, however, not least over the issue of the council’s freesheet Hackney Today, which the local authority has been ordered by central government to axe. Referring to the publication as the ‘Hackney Toe Rag’, Cllr Steinberger voiced concern over the amount of money the council was spending in straitened circumstances on mounting a legal challenge against the government’s decision. In response, Mayor Glanville was emphatic that “the day the government stops us having to publish statutory notices we will stop publishing Hackney Today”, suggesting that the local authority would continue to publish the fortnightly flyer indefinitely in contravention of the government directive.