Greenwich councillors signed off a 4.99 per cent council tax increase on Thursday – but Labour representatives were accused of laughing when the fate of the borough’s adventure play centres were raised.
The increase is the maximum allowed without a referendum or special permission from the government – a 2.99 per cent rise plus a further 2 per cent to go towards growing adult social care costs, which now make up 70 per cent of the council’s budget.
Neighbouring Bexley, Bromley, Lewisham and Southwark are all imposing the same increase.
With London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan planning a £20.14 Band D increase in City Hall’s precept, which includes TfL, police and fire services, the combined bills are set to rise by 4.8 per cent.
The meeting also included councillors signing off the council’s budget, which totals about £300 million, and a rise of 4.8 per cent in council rents, which are accounted for separately.
About £7.1 million will be cut from council budgets, although these will mostly be from internal savings rather than services. This follows recent cuts to services including removing the exemption from council tax for about 15,000 of the borough’s poorest residents, and cuts to street sweeping services.
However, some previously-announced cuts – like those to adventure play centres and planned library opening hour reductions – are yet to take place, and councillors heard that Greenwich still faces a £101 million shortfall in its budget by 2029-30.
Conservatives on the council attempted to amend the spending plans to cut the communications budget – including abolishing the new director of communications role – and scrap the political assistants that were introduced in 2024. They also called on the borough to look at sharing back-office services with its neighbours.
They said this would free up money to save the borough’s adventure play centres. Three of the five are in line to be closed, although one of these could be taken on by a voluntary group. One will remain open, and the other will become a “youth hub”. The council has insisted that the closures are a “transformation” which includes changes to its broader youth service. A “call-in” meeting challenging the plans will take place on Monday.
“You have got this badly wrong,” Conservative leader Matt Hartley said. “The consultation you ran on closing the staffed play centre service at Coldharbour, Glyndon and Woolwich was, I’m afraid, a sham. You didn’t even speak to the young people who use the Coldharbour centre in my ward. Despite promising to do so, you ignored the community around the play centre who engaged in that consultation in good faith and were ignored.
Hartley said the cut to the communications budget could be made “without a single resident noticing the difference”, and that the savings would protect the adventure play centre service and enable a “meaningful” consultation on its future.
The Tories also said they would create a fund for park improvements and create an “HMO toolkit” to help local residents respond to applications to convert houses into bedsits.
Green and independent councillors supported the Tories’ amendment, but it was voted down by Labour.
Denise Hyland, the cabinet member for finance, said the past Conservative government had stripped £150 million from council budgets, adding: “Essentially, councils are underfunded, and I think we could all agree on that, but actually, you don’t want to agree. Do you just want to make political headlines with adventure playgrounds? You know? No, really, honestly?”
As Hartley disagreed, a ripple of laughter broke out in the council chamber.
Later, Hartley said that the Labour government not increasing Greenwich’s funding showed that “austerity was never a political choice. It was an economic necessity.”
He said of Hyland: “She accused me of just getting a headline on adventure play centres and all her Labour colleagues laughed. It’s not funny. Parents and families are watching this. Frankly, they’re watching you taking it lightly that their adventure play centres, like Coldharbour, are ending their staffed services.
“They are disgusted at how they are being treated, how young people are being treated by this council. It’s not funny. It’s not about headlines. It’s about this council’s attitude and the disrespect that it has shown to the residents of this borough.”
Hyland responded: “I totally reject that people were laughing about adventure playgrounds or adventure play centres. Councillor [Sandra] Bauer and Councillor [Adel] Khaireh have worked so hard to transform the adventure play centres and to invest in a modern-day youth service that builds a future for young people, fully staffed, seven days a week.”
Okereke ruled out sharing services with a neighbouring borough, saying: “When I speak to my counterpart in Lewisham, to raise issues of how much they’re spending on IT, they have to go and speak to another council. Is that how we want to tie our hands behind our backs?
“I sat in on Kensington & Chelsea, watching them on talk about their future budget, and every single decision they had to make on adult social care and children’s services, they had to think about where Westminster was with their budget.
“Shared services is not the solution for any borough. It’s not it’s not stopped Kensington & Chelsea from having to make cuts to their budget. It’s not stopped Lewisham. It’s not stopped any council.”
Okereke said that Greenwich had avoided being one of the nine boroughs in London needing government support because “we’ve been financially responsible, prudent with a purpose, not by chance, but by the result of careful planning, responsible leadership and difficult decisions under tough circumstances”.
The meeting also heard from Rachel Taggart-Ryan, the cabinet member for enforcement and community safety, who described being with her mother when she was attacked with a brick near the Cherry Orchard Estate in Charlton, and needed treatment for concussion.
“She could have been more severely injured, even killed, if the blow had landed differently,” Taggart-Ryan said. “The perpetrators ran off and disappeared into the estate, and as far as the police were concerned as there was no CCTV coverage of the incident, that was the end of the matter.
“Every time I walk down my parents’ streets, I see the gap in the garden wall where the brick was taken from. I am reminded of that night, of the ambulance ride and of the hospital, and I have an overwhelming sense of urgency that such an incident should not go uninvestigated again.”
Taggart-Ryan said the council had taken delivery of four new mobile CCTV units for estates, with four more coming in April.
“Had such cameras been available at the time of my mother’s attack, the perpetrators would have been tracked and therefore identified and some redress brought forward through the council and the police working together.”
The council tax increase passed by 29 votes to nil, with the Conservatives, independents and Greens abstaining.
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