Greenwich councillors have signed off a 4.99% council tax hike  – with thousands of the poorest residents losing their exemption from the charges.

Councillors voted through the new budget on Wednesday night, which together with the increase in the London mayor’s precept, means Band D bills in Greenwich will break the £2,000 mark for the first time, according to research carried out for the London Standard.

Despite the hike, Greenwich’s £2,011 bills mean the borough will be the 22nd most expensive out of the 33 London councils. It will still be cheaper than those in Lewisham (£2,135), Bromley (£2,042) and Bexley, which remains southeast London’s most expensive borough at £2,258.

But that will be little comfort for thousands of working-age residents on low incomes, who had been given a 100 per cent discount on their council tax since 2020.

Now the discount will be cut to 80 per cent to save £1.1 million, with about 12,400 of the poorest residents expected to pay at least 20 per cent towards their bills. Matt Hartley, the Conservative opposition leader, branded it “a vote to increase poverty in this borough” at the budget-setting meeting on Wednesday night.

A fund of £1 million will support those who will be affected by the new bills.

Plans to cut funding to Maryon Wilson Animal Park as part of the budget were scrapped last month, but planned cuts to adventure play centres and library opening hours remain. A number of residents had hoped to address the meeting on the play centre cuts, but were barred from doing so on the grounds that it was a meeting specially called to set the budget. 

The plans for cuts were only announced in mid-January, giving residents only a day or so to submit questions for that month’s council meeting.

Sandra Bauer, the cabinet member for equality, culture and communities, said she would speak to the residents and had already spoken to staff and users of the centres.

“I understand how talk of budget cuts in this area has made workers, parents and service users feel concerned, and I’m sorry for that,” she said.

“What this was always about was investing capital funds to make things better and more efficient, but what it has done is provoke a dialogue, a positive one, that is going to do much more good. We recognise the good work that adventure play centres do but we want to future-proof them.”

The council’s budget includes a £1 million fund for local residents to set up renewable energy projects, £1.6 million for road repairs, £680,000 for the “sustainable streets” project to introduce controlled parking zones, £200,000 to expand emotional wellbeing hubs for children and young people and £1.7 million for six centres for people with special educational needs.

Conservative proposals to cut the council’s communications budget and scrap political assistant posts to fund community safety enforcement officers and CCTV to target antisocial behaviour, and to add more money to the council tax support fund, were voted down.

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