Hackney Council agrees 2014/15 budget and rejects alternative Tory and Lib Dem plans
Protesters gather at Hackney Town Hall. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
Around 20 protesters gathered outside the Town Hall last night ahead of a Hackney Council meeting to agree the budget for 2014/15 against a backdrop of huge cuts imposed by central government.
Hackney’s Mayor Jules Pipe said frontline services were being protected while at the same time council tax was being frozen for the ninth consecutive year “to help residents who are struggling with rising bills”.
The Labour-run council voted to reject both the Conservatives’ and Liberal Democrats’ amendments, which proposed, respectively, relief for the most hard-pressed council taxpayers on benefits and giving more money to the voluntary sector.
The Tories proposed funding the council tax relief by cutting money spent in areas including highways and infrastructure maintenance, and by removing proposed expenditure on the introduction of 20 miles per hour zones.
Addressing Conservative councillor Simche Steinberger, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods Councillor Feryal Demirci said: “You harp on about road closures and traffic calming measures like road humps at every single budget meeting but these are the only two tools available to councils to address a range of road safety traffic issues.”
Councillor Steinberger said the council’s Labour administration was “cutting services and blaming it on the government” and had “forgotten about residents”.
He said: “This council in the last few years has saved tens of millions of pounds, and the question is, does that mean if the government wouldn’t have cut money we would be wasting millions of pounds, and quite clearly millions are being thrown down the drain.
“Surely there has to be some kind of responsibility for what you do with our money.”
He added that many residents could not afford council tax and said the council was spending too much on consultations and schemes like the regeneration of the Narrow Way and was “forgetting about the people that actually live in Hackney”.
The Lib Dems proposed making the savings required to fund their proposals by reducing the frequency of street cleaning, cutting the number of graffiti removal crews and making cuts in other areas.
Lib Dem councillor Abraham Jacobson criticised what he said was a £4,500 underspend on the school clothing grant – money he said could have been used to help those with large families. He added: “It’s woefully inadequate. We on the other hand are offering something the masses can enjoy.”
Labour’s Cllr Luke Akehurst criticised “both parties’ bizarre desire to tinker with council tax” but said the electorate was “not massively impressed” by the Conservatives’ and Lib Dems’ financial proposals.
Cllr Akehurst said the opposition parties offered “no fundamental proposal to deliver services in a different way.”
He added: “They’re mucking around on detail, some of which sounds innocuous but when you actually drill into it, it’s actually quite significant stuff.”
Of the Tories’ proposal to cut highways maintenance, he said: “This is exactly the sort of stuff that was happening when the council was hung.
“It was described as transforming Hackney – yes, transforming Hackney into a tip where your car runs into a pothole in Amhurst Road every five yards.”
The council also voted to increase fees for pest control, leisure facilities and function room hire, and it resolved to move its bank account from the Co-operative Bank to Lloyds.
Chatsworth Road Market and Goldsmith Row Market are set to be made formal council-run markets after the council voted to “formalise all Hackney markets”.
Note: This article was amended at 1.15pm on Friday 28 February 2014. The story originally stated there was an increase and overspend in the budget of the chief executive’s office and suggested that the Conservatives were proposing a reduction in council tax, whereas it was in fact a rebate.
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