The total £21billion budget is shared across City Hall, Transport for London, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and London Fire Brigade, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter

The City Hall budget debate (credit Kumail Jaffer/LDRS)

Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan’s annual budget has been approved by the London Assembly without any policy changes.

Khan is responsible for a budget of over £21billion, shared across the Greater London Authority (GLA) – this includes Transport for London (TfL), the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) and London Fire Brigade (LFB).

The mayor’s final proposals for 2026/27 include a record £1.26bn for policing, including a new crackdown on mobile phone theft, as well as bolstering TfL’s and LFB’s budgets to the tune of £250million each.

Khan will invest £20m to implement recommendations from his AI Taskforce, with the same amount going to exploring “fares innovation” at TfL, thanks to a £142.6m windfall discovered last week and an average £20.13 increase in the mayor’s share of an average Londoner’s council tax bill next year.

Passenger numbers on the capital’s buses fell last year for the first time since the pandemic, dropping from 1.869 billion journeys to 1.842 billion, and the London Assembly was previously told that sluggish bus speeds were to blame. New spending could help reduce fares for a limited period of time.

The GLA budget has now gone through several rounds of scrutiny, though only the annual meeting in City Hall yesterday (Thursday 26th) represented a chance for the London Assembly to force the mayor’s hand by voting through binding policy changes.

The Labour group’s eleven members, however, ensured all eight amendments, which required a two-thirds majority on the 25-strong London Assembly, were voted down.

These included proposals from the City Hall Conservatives’ budget spokesperson Neil Garratt, who put forward a raft of cost-saving measures across City Hall that he said would allow the GLA to cancel their planned average £20.13 rise in the mayor’s precept of council tax.

The £65.7m needed to do this would be raised by, among other steps, reducing the number of deputy mayors from nine to five, and cutting staff head count across the GLA and TfL.

Hina Bokhari, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the London Assembly, repeated her calls for a dedicated disability champion in City Hall to hold the mayor to account.

Such a request had been passed by the London Assembly twice before but never accepted by the mayor, who has suggested the responsibility belongs to his deputy mayor for communities and social justice, Dr Debbie Weekes-Bernard.

Reform UK called on the mayor to deploy 567 more police officers on London’s streets at the cost of £46m by reducing City Hall’s staff head count to 2016 levels.

They also asked TfL to install toilets along every one of 63 bus priority networks to give “dignity” to drivers who often have to go hours without access to a bathroom. This would have cost £20m and come out of the network’s safe and healthy streets budget.

Another Reform UK amendment suggested taking £27m from the budget to help repair the Broadmead Road Bridge in Redbridge, which has been closed to traffic since 2023 amid safety concerns.

Their fourth and final amendment was to reverse the planned closures of 24/7 police station front counters, with the £7m coming from ending TfL’s nominee pass, which allows free travel for a household member of an employee.

The Tories and Lib Dems unsuccessfully attempted a last-minute joint amendment to save all police station front counters, funded by efficiency savings at TfL.

Assembly members did manage to pass non-binding motions on tackling grooming gangs and the funding cut for the cyber helpline, which provides free, expert help for victims of cybercrime and online harm. However, Khan is under no obligation to accede to any of the motions, and the budget was passed as previously outlined.

The City Hall Greens, meanwhile, repeated last month’s calls for increased funding for renter’s rights groups, legal action against Heathrow, reprioritising investment within the police and promoting active travel in areas where access is worst.

But Green Party leader Zack Polanski was criticised for missing the mayor’s budget vote to campaign in the Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester. The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) observed Polanski quietly leaving the City Hall chamber within an hour of the budget meeting after asking several questions to the mayor about his final budget for next year. Shortly before 11am, he then tweeted he was on a train to Manchester, while assembly members, including other Greens, stayed till 4pm to quiz the mayor and vote on budget amendments.

Polanski was elected Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales in September 2025. Previously, he was elected as a member of the London Assembly in May 2021.

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