Conservative leader Peter Zinkin slams “financial mismanagement” but cabinet member Ammar Naqvi accuses him of “disgraceful ignorance” reports David Floyd

Barnet’s political leaders have traded blows ahead of a cabinet meeting tonight which will discuss the growing hole in the borough’s finances.

The cabinet member responsible for finance, Ammar Naqvi accused Conservative group leader Peter Zinkin of “disgraceful ignorance” after he described the current situation as “the culmination of Labour’s breathtaking financial mismanagement since coming into power”.

The opposition leader was responding to news last week that the council has a £25million overspend in the current financial year, rising from £20million between June and September despite attempts to cut costs.

Cllr Zinkin fears major cuts to the council’s workforce will now be necessary. He told Barnet Post: “To put it plainly, we’re talking about a potential ‘decimation’ of staff – cutting one in every ten employees. This isn’t an isolated issue. It’s the culmination of Labour’s breathtaking financial mismanagement since coming into power.”

He laid the blame firmly on the Labour administration which came to power at the local elections in 2022 saying: “The first thing Labour did upon taking control was to abolish the finance scrutiny committee, handing full financial responsibility to the council leader on top of all his other duties.”

He also seemed to express a lack of confidence in Cllr Naqvi’s ability to handle the situation: “It took them two years, despite our identification of the issue and two peer review reports from fellow Labour Council Leaders to do anything about it.

“Yet even then, they appointed someone with minimal financial experience. In those two wasted years, they’ve burned through £100 million of reserves, the financial buffer left by Barnet Conservatives. They have, in effect, burnt £200,000 of reserves, residents’ money, every single day since they took power in 2022.”

He added: “For the last two years, we warned Labour that efficiencies such as a reduction of the council’s comms budget, reducing the number of cabinet members and a 4.7% reduction in staff was the only way to maintain a balanced budget. Labour laughed and ridiculed the proposal but now they’re having to plan to let go of 10% of staff in a panic to fix the mess they have made.”

In response, Cllr Naqvi, who is cabinet member for financial sustainabilty and poverty reduction, rejected Cllr Zinkin’s claims. He told Barnet Post: “Once again, Cllr Zinkin demonstrates a disgraceful ignorance of the financial vandalism the Conservative Party were responsible for, locally and nationally. Even the savings he mentions add-up to only £3.3m, compared to the Conservative-created budget gap we face next year of £28m. Worse still, finance officers warned at the time that his proposals could not all be delivered.

He added: “The reserves he mentions were mostly earmarked and spent on commitments Cllr Zinkin and his Conservative colleagues signed the council up to, and that we inherited from them. This includes the need to use reserves to cover things they had no plan to fund.

“In short, much like all promises made by the Conservative Party, the reserves existed in theory but in practice they lacked substance and usefulness.

“Over the last two years we have unearthed so many financial problems arising from 19 years of Barnet Conservative rule, it is going to take some time to fix them all.

“They failed to plan for the future, preferring to hand over financial control to Capita for years, a decision which effectively kept issues hidden from plain view.

“The financial scrutiny committee Cllr Zinkin is so fond of mentioning identified none of these problems – it took a Labour cabinet to do that, and we are now focused on taking the difficult decisions needed to sort out the mess they left us with.”

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