The Greenwich Wire has been the only news outlet to examine Greenwich Council’s plans to cut £33 million from next year’s budget. Now ANTHONY OKEREKE, the council leader, has his say on what Greenwich residents can expect from their council over the year ahead.
After over a decade of austerity, everyone – including me – is tired of talking about government cuts and stretched budgets.
Sadly though, it is an unavoidable conversation. There is no getting away from it. More councils have declared themselves practically bankrupt in the last 18 months alone than they did in the previous 30 years.
While we have a government that splurges eye-watering sums of money on pet-project flights to Rwanda that don’t take off than it does on building homes or funding social care, I fear we’ll have to keep talking about it.
Because while Westminster focuses on slogans and divisive culture wars, local councillors are the ones that must front up to real communities about the real issues we all face.
And now councils are having to make the most drastic cuts in recent history.
Why? Well take your pick…
For years there has been a chronic lack of long-term planning by central government. It beggars belief, but it’s true – we are given next to no notice of the funding we get for the year ahead. No business or family could manage their finances like that, but that’s where we are.
Then we have inflation – the result, in part, of political decisions by Liz Truss – making everything more expensive, with rents and mortgage payments spiralling out of control and the cost of living crippling communities, causing demand for services to soar.
A perfect storm doesn’t do it justice. It’s a full-blown hurricane.
As a council, it’s our duty to balance the budget. We owe it to residents who rely on us to ensure we are financially stable so we can provide the help they expect.
The alternative, as we’re increasingly seeing, would be to go cap in hand to the government, asking for a bailout and putting our services in jeopardy. After a decade of brutal austerity, the only way we can defend ourselves, and residents, from financial ruin is to make some tough choices.
We’re trying to trim the edges rather than making sweeping cuts. For example, by tweaking some libraries’ opening hours we can avoid having to close any completely – such as Hillingdon has been forced to do.
While there are some proposals that have been incredibly difficult to consider, there are others that I am incredibly proud of. Our budget this year comes with the future in mind – investing in the health and wellbeing of the next generation while protecting the environment for them.
- We’re opening eight new pioneering mental health hubs in secondary and primary schools to support young people and families.
- We’re creating new school streets that are closed to traffic, so kids can walk to school safely and reduce pollution around schools.
- We’re launching a new care team to make sure kids who can’t live with their parents still have a safe and loving place to live.
Those are real changes that will have a real impact.
- We’re setting up a green investment scheme so residents can fund new initiatives to tackle the climate crisis.
- We’re implementing 20mph zones and providing more cycle hangars to safely store bikes.
- We’re investing £7 million into a sustainable transport fund to make it cleaner and easier to move around our borough.
These are real commitments to tackle a real problem – the climate crisis.
We’ve also looked at ourselves to see how we can do things quicker and cheaper, without compromising on what residents expect. We are genuinely trying to be innovative with how we use our limited funding for the greatest good.
We’ve been forced into making some changes that we obviously wouldn’t, unless we had to – and unfortunately, we do have to.
But we are making the hard choices, in the right way. We are minimising the harm felt from the failures of central government, while also being innovative to deliver groundbreaking new services that will improve the lives and opportunities of residents.
Where we can do things better, we are.
We’re cracking down on rogue landlords, improving housing standards for private renters, providing tech for vulnerable residents and renovating old council homes so they’re warmer.
While councillors up and down the country prepare to spend their evenings standing up in town halls to justify the cuts they’re being forced to make, the real perpetrators are making inhumane bets with Piers Morgan and cutting lifesaving cost-of-living support, leaving us to pick up the pieces.
We are doing the very best with what we have today, so the borough is better tomorrow.
Anthony Okereke is the leader of Greenwich Council and a Labour councillor for Woolwich Common ward.
Conservative opposition leader Matt Hartley has also written about the council’s budget.
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