Barry Rawlings on a budget “shaped by a responsible Labour administration”

Barry Rawlings pictured outside Hendon Town Hall (credit Barnet Council)

The Labour budget that we just passed puts us on the road to a financially stable Barnet, with cleaner streets, safer neighbourhoods and lower council tax than all our neighbouring boroughs.

It will help make Barnet better for your family, and through some difficult decisions, clear up the mess we inherited from Barnet Conservatives.

Our budget continues to:

Fix Barnet’s roads with a £97million investment programme.
Tackle anti-social behaviour with our Public Space Protection Order and a repaired CCTV system – left two-thirds broken by the Conservatives.
Help keep Barnet tidy through community skips and deep cleans.
Deliver 1,000 new council homes
All while charging an annual council tax lower than all our neighbours including a full £360 less than Conservative Harrow for Band D Household.

There are difficult choices in the budget. Every council would like to have lower fees and charges or provide even more services.

But this is a budget that was shaped by a responsible Labour administration that has a clear sight of the borough’s finances.

That contrasts with the feckless Barnet Conservatives who ran away from financial oversight at the Council.

They paid a multinational consultancy millions of pounds to run many council services for them, avoiding even knowing about the challenges facing Barnet.

Barnet Conservatives were asleep at the wheel leading to many mistakes.

There was the Icelandic Banks debacle that risked £27million of council funds and the scramble to get back our money.

Under the Conservatives decisions were made without the safeguards needed to protect the £1.7billion Barnet pension fund. We are now resolving problems caused by their negligence and we are pleased to say that no pensioners will be worse off.

The Conservatives lost control of the council’s safety net – our reserves. On leaving office, the Conservatives publicly claimed that the council had £117million of reserves. But £58million of that was given by government to deal with COVID-19 and was due to be given back when the pandemic retreated.

£30 million of it was already set aside for pressures they had not accounted for. Only £16 million was ringfenced for capital, but the programme contained commitments of over £1billion.

The amount of useable reserves left to us was £39million, which we maintained through our first year in office.

However, when the Liz Truss mini budget set interest sky rocketing, the council’s debts became more expensive.

The Conservatives’ failure to invest – in council housing, children’s services and adults’ services – began to bite, exposing us to the high costs of providing temporary accommodation to homeless families and meeting ever increasing care demands.

Under Labour’s responsible running of the council, we directly oversee the finances – we do not pay a company millions to do it.

Spending review boards go through all new spending, four times a week. Leading councillors have to justify all future spending in star chambers.

Since the end of 2023 we have reduced the number of expensive agency staff by more than one-third, from almost 500 to fewer than 330. We have also strengthened our financial resilience through investment.

New council homes will bring down temporary accommodation costs. New in-house children’s care facilities mean we do not need to use as many expensive contractors. AI is being introduced across the council, saving staff time on administration.

Compare that to the Conservatives. As one former Conservative councillor put it in this newspaper: “The Conservatives’ disastrous outsourcing programme cost taxpayers tens of millions, leaving us with a financial mess we are still paying for today.”

Barnet Conservatives left us in such a mess that the Labour Government has needed to help us out with additional support this year.

That makes a welcome change from a Conservative government that cut funding to Barnet by 50 per cent.

Barnet Labour is clearing up the Conservatives’ mess, putting the council on the road to financial sustainability and delivering a cleaner, safer borough with one of the lowest council tax levels in North London.

Labour are leading a Barnet turnaround: protecting our services, putting in place the processes so that the Council is run professionally, planning for the future and taking tough decisions to balance our budgets. Responsible, tough leadership to secure a brighter future for all of us.

Cllr Barry Rawlings is Labour leader of Barnet Council. Barnet Conservative leader Cllr Peter Zinkin gives his view on the budget here.

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