Council leader Barry Rawlings hits back in response to opposition criticism

Hendon Town Hall and (inset) council leader Barry Rawlings

The job of the Labour party locally and nationally has been to steer our borough and country to calmer waters after the storms of recent Conservative years.

While the maritime metaphors in Cllr Zinkin’s recent Barnet Post article have literary value, they shroud a fog over the causes of many of our challenges.

For example, we know that there are misgivings among residents regarding the proposed redevelopment scheme for Edgware. But this is a scheme that the Conservatives dreamed up when they published a planning document for the area in 2021.

When Labour took office, in 2022, it could only negotiate with the developer on the basis of that planning document. The Conservatives had failed to deliver a borough wide plan in time, making any refusal of planning permission liable for judicial review.

Labour has published the delayed borough wide plan and managed to negotiate down building height. As part of these negotiations, £41 million will now be allocated for specific infrastructure projects for Edgware, as opposed to going towards the general budget for such works across Barnet.

It is one thing to repair the ship while at in sea, quite another to have the previous captains who were rejected by residents sat at the back complaining.

Another crisis the Conservatives left us is the epidemic of homelessness across London. During years of zero interest rates, the Conservatives failed to invest in council housing. Today almost 3,000 families live in life-hobbling temporary accommodation which costs the council millions. With interest rates sky rocketing following the Liz Truss disaster budget, the Conservatives now make complaints that not enough council homes are being delivered.

We are on course to secure 1,000 new council homes after years when Barnet Conservatives said it would be impossible to deliver half of that number. Labour will always want to secure affordable and social homes at a greater and faster rate, and needs no lectures from a party for who have an ideological indifference at best to council homes.

We are now forecast to secure between 200 and 300 council homes per year going forward just by acquisitions and the number of families in temporary accommodation will be falling by 2028/29. Such delivery at a time of Liz Truss induced high interest rates and a resources drought caused by the bad Brexit deal surpasses what the Conservatives ever achieved when the price of borrowing was a record low levels.

These are difficult financial times for the council still reeling from a cut of £100 million over the years of national Conservative government. The Conservatives knew the crisis was coming for a decade before we got here.

But first they outsourced everything they could from the council, losing direct oversight of day-to-day spending. And they stuck to an outdated system of committees to run the council. That meant that no one committee or person took full responsibility for the overall financial situation.

We have modernised decision-making at the council. A cabinet of leading councillors makes ultimate decisions. There are finance officers embedded in departments. There are spending review panels meeting up to four days per week to check on outgoings. We have taken back control of the council, and the financial picture is improving. In our last quarterly report, projected spending had been cut by more than £2million.

There are more difficult choices to come. Barnet Labour will always take direct responsibility for those decisions – not pay someone else to make (or not make) – those decisions for us. Labour managed to grab hold of the wheel when the storm raged around us. We are now steering Barnet to calmer waters.

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