Labour dismisses opposition’s budget amendments, with Hackney Mayor calling them a ‘disgrace’

Hackney Council has passed its forthcoming budget for the year, with the Labour administration dismissing a number of amendments attempted by the Conservative opposition group.

The heavily trailed plan for the Town Hall’s finances will see Council Tax rise by 4.99 per cent.

The local authority is also pouring extra investment into supporting low-income working-age households with a reduction in their council tax bill by another £60 per year, as well as an extra £900,000 to tackle inequality and poverty.

Conservative budget amendments included a number of challenges to tentpole council policies, including the hotly-debated Low Traffic Neighbourhoods traffic-calming measures, as well as a reversal of a combined one-off spend of £800,000 on food poverty and support for under-achieving school pupils.

Referring to this latter policy, Conservative Cllr Simche Steinberger said: “These are new items, it has not been in the budget until now. Although obviously we would love to, if we were the administration we could do it in any case, because we would have had loads of money which they are wasting on rubbish.

“For instance [council freesheets] Hackney Today and Hackney Life would go straight out the window if we were in charge. It clearly doesn’t have anything that is important for local people.

“I believe the chief executive is getting something like £160,000 per year. Do you think if we were to advertise a job of a chief exec for £70,000 we would not get a good chief exec?

“It’s ridiculous money, it makes no sense. The current Mayor gets £80,000 a year for what? It’s shocking, it’s out of hand. The front bench are going home with £40k plus. The whole allowance business is well out of hand.”

Conservative councillors’ suggestion to reduce the costs of top councillors by capping the Mayors’ allowance at £50,000 and bringing an end to the retention of two deputy mayors is listed in their amendment as saving a little over £60,000.

Other financial savings suggested by the Conservatives include a deferment of planned investment in libraries by £500,000, the discontinuation of the Town Hall’s tree-planting programme at a saving of £200,000, and the rephasing of the programme of LED street light bulb replacements, saving £380,000.

Planned highways maintenance would have seen a reduction in investment of £1m, though council officers added “strong advice” to this policy that this reduction could have only been maintained for one year and would have needed to be reversed in 2021/22.

The Conservative group also called for investment into the King’s Hall leisure centre to take place “over a longer time frame” in an £800,000 savings amendment.

Hackney Mayor Philip Glanville recently said that his administration’s aims to rejuvenate the centre is currently “a bit of a watch-this-space”, with more resources required to keep the centre open and safe and a “very clear business case” necessary.

Cllr James Peters attempted to argue that, due to the proposed amendments only being submitted “a little over an hour” ahead of the Town Hall’s budget meeting, there was a question mark over councillors’ ability to debate the Conservatives’ proposals, with a lack of certainty over whether the suggestions complied with the borough’s statutory duty to present a balanced budget.

This argument got short shrift from Conservative Cllr Harvey Odze, who pointed out that such amendments are formulated with the support of meetings with politically-impartial council finance mandarin Ian Williams, who Odze said would not have allowed breaches of statutory duty to be suggested.

Other policies called for by opposition councillors included:

• The revocation of fortnightly bin collections with a move back to a weekly service
• A formal commitment to ensure no reductions in the support of children with special educational needs in schools
• A pledge for social care to be “delivered in a way that ensures the needs of all communities are respected and accommodated”
• A review of legal expenditure in relation to the defence of new policy decisions by the council in court.

Cllr Steinberger added: “I believe that most councillors wouldn’t even understand what gets to us. We can’t do a proper budget, because [Labour] are the administration, a lot of things get thrown straight out the window and we are having to support it. We are only allowed to do a little bit of tinkering around.”

Responding to the proposed amendments, Mayor Glanville said: “Where to begin. Cllr Steinberger has said they don’t have very long or technical support. What they do have, surely, is their values as councillors, which are on display here, not their attention to technical detail or financial acumen.

“Every time they have a value based judgment in an amendment, they choose the wrong side. In response to our budget that is full of hope and renewal and investment into our most vulnerable communities, we see ‘not implementing the one-off spending in food poverty and humanitarian response’. Don’t do that. Don’t spend the money on under-achieving pupils.

“Twenty-three of the bullet points are exactly the same as they were last year. They don’t care about the borough’s infrastructure, the vulnerable, and they just care about their own political hobby horses that put their values fully on display.

“I think it’s a disgrace as a set of amendments, and it will cost money in the long run. These aren’t real savings. If you don’t invest in our highways, in the borough’s infrastructure, LED lights, it will cost more in the future. I would urge everyone to vote for a budget of hope, not this budget amendment of despair.”