Cabinet member for finance Simon Radford said successful lobbying efforts had led to 26% increase in funding for the borough reports David Floyd

Hendon Town Hall and (inset) Simon Radford

Barnet Council’s finance chief has warned that the borough will still need additional help to balance its budget despite a multi-year increase in central government funding.

As part of a three-year funding settlement for councils announced by the government last week, Barnet will receive a 26% boost in funding, which will mean an increase of £17million next year.

The agreement represents an unexpectedly positive outcome for Barnet as cabinet member for finance Simon Radford wrote in Barnet Post in September of his fears that the government’s Fair Funding Review could lead to the council losing money, after the model initially proposed failed to take into account factors such as the high cost of housing in the borough.

However, the additional funding will not be enough to fill the gap outlined in an interview with Barnet Post earlier this month, where Cllr Radford warned that the borough was planning a request for £88million of exceptional financial support to enable it to balance next year’s budget.

Commenting on the new settlement, Cllr Radford said: “We welcome the government’s announcement of our provisional funding settlement, which means our grant funding increases by £37m over the multi-year settlement compared to 2025/26 – that’s a 26 per cent increase.

“For next year’s budget, this translates into an increase of £17m to our grant funding compared to the 2025/26 baseline.

“This is clearly a better funding position than the pre-announcement modelling which suggested we would lose £9m by the end of the multi-year settlement.”

Highlighting the success of arguments made by Labour councils to party colleagues in central government, he said: “It shows that our lobbying efforts were listened to, and that while the Conservatives didn’t lobby their government for decades during austerity and got annual cuts to their funding, Labour lobbies hard and gets increases.

“We are grateful to the government for responding to our concerns on the funding reforms by including housing costs in deprivation measures for example.”

But he warned: “However, as set out at the December Cabinet meeting, we have significant pressures to factor in from rising demand for statutory services, and therefore we still have a budget gap and will still need to apply for exceptional financial support (EFS) to balance our budget next year.

“We are currently reviewing our application for EFS for 2026/27 to see how much we can reduce it by, taking into account our confirmed grant funding and other factors or costs for new government initiatives like collection of food waste.

“We will have an updated EFS position by mid-January.”

Responding to the news, Barnet’s Conservative opposition leader, Peter Zinkin, told Barnet Post that the settlement would not tackle the council’s underlying challenges. He said: “The Labour government has recognised the manifest unfairness to London of their original proposals but unfortunately the revised settlement, although somewhat better for Barnet, does not solve the underlying financial problem.”

He added: “The problem is that Barnet cannot balance its budget, a budget with a worsening position each year. Borrowings have to be repaid and Labour refuses to say how they are going to respond to government policy of a minimum band D council tax of £2000, £500 higher than the current level and on which our grant is based.”

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