Greenwich councillors signed off on a 5 per cent council tax hike and £33.7 million in cuts on Wednesday night – with the warning that more cuts will be on their way next year.

Streets will be cleaned less often, children’s centres likely to close and library opening hours may be cut back as part of the biggest package of cuts for years. 

But money will be going into a network of eight mental health hubs for schools, schemes to tackle food poverty, a sustainable transport fund and there will be a green investment scheme where residents can buy bonds to fund projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions and improving communities.

With London mayor Sadiq Khan increasing his share of council tax by 8.6 per cent, a Band D home can expect to be charged £1,920 a year – up 5.8 per cent from the current figure of £1,814. However, bills in Greenwich will remain cheaper than those in Bexley, Bromley or Lewisham.

This year's council tax rates in full

Denise Hyland, the cabinet member for finance, told councillors on Wednesday that the “local government finance system is broken” and warned of another £27 million of cuts to come next year.

“Central government funding has been reduced by well over 50 per cent since 2010, and we are putting council tax up to ensure that the council can still be there when those residents need us,” she said.

“But even when we sign off this next year’s budget, we turn the page and still have another £27 million of cuts at least to find for the following year and more beyond. In fact, £54 million over three years. It is relentless. The system is broken and it needs radical change, and I would say a change of government.”

But Conservative opposition leader Matt Hartley said many of the cuts were back-office savings that could have been made years ago – meaning that residents had missed out on years of better or cheaper services as a result.

“This is the most Tory budget that Greenwich Council has been asked to vote on since the last Conservative administration, in 1971,” he said. 

“You could have curbed council tax rises, you could have done more on the cost of living crisis and certainly acted more quickly when it was needed in spring 2022. You could have protected many of the frontline services that you are now cutting to the tune of £6 million pounds a year and rising. 

“Those are the roads not taken and they’re paved with tens of millions of pounds of local taxpayers’ cash. And if I sound angry about it, it’s because I am angry about that fact.”

Hartley also criticised council leader Anthony Okereke’s decision last year to expand the town hall’s communications team and proposals to hire a political assistant – a post common in other boroughs.

“Communication spending is being protected by this administration over frontline services,” he said. “The taxpayer is still stuck with Councillor Okereke’s costly decision last year to expand his communications team with all those PR videos and those glossy consultations. And he seems intent despite almost everybody being against it to press on with his plan to hire a taxpayer funded political assistant – yet more vanity projects and a serious political misjudgment in my view.”

Okereke said that Hartley “despite being elected, seems not to understand our residents. He talks about dropping community engagement, but chooses to ignore the feedback our residents told us in the consultation of our Greenwich, that they want community engagement.”

“This Labour council built a cost-of-living front through community engagement,” Okereke said. “When Councillor [Sarah] Merrill and Councillor [Miranda] Williams were facilitating conversations in their ward on how to tackle the cost of living crisis, that was community engagement. 

“When Councillor [Ivis] Williams and Councillor [Ann-Marie] Cousins were walking in Abbey Wood handing out leaflets, talking to people about poverty, that was community engagement done alongside our officers. That is the community engagement that he wants to rip away from this council.”

Rachel Taggart-Ryan, a Middle Park & Horn Park councillor, praised the plan for mental health hubs in schools, speaking candidly about her experiences with depression as a teenager at a school in Lewisham.

“I remember being sent out of class with uncontrollable fits of crying and not being able to deal with this, and there was absolutely no support at all,” she said. 

“I was sent out of classes to go and sit in the deputy headmaster’s office. He told me, ‘you’ve got to count your blessings.’ There were no referrals to anybody else.

“Of my five closest friends, by the time we all went to university, four out of five of us were receiving care for depression and anxiety and other mental health disorders. It is a massive and unspoken crisis in our schools.”

Saying that the pandemic had caused “unimaginable” problems, Taggart-Ryan added: “This is quite a unique programme and one that is not only needed, but has been needed even in peacetime.”

Updated at 6pm to correct the council tax rate and to insert a table showing all bands.