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37-34: Mayor’s 15% Council Tax hike rejected in budget vote

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Fund Croydon fairly: Hundreds gathered to oppose the 15% Council Tax hike, in the biggest demonstration seen on Katharine Street in 40 years. Pic: Guy Smallman

ANDREW FISHER sat through the three-and-a-half hours of last night’s budget non-setting meeting, so that you didn’t have to

Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat councillors voted together last night to reject the budget proposal from the borough’s Conservative Mayor, Jason Perry, by 37 votes to 34. Both Labour and the Greens stated that they could not support a budget that included Mayor Perry’s 15per cent Council Tax hike.

Paper-shuffling: Jason Perry

The evening had kicked off with a large demonstration outside the Town Hall – a mixture of community groups, concerned residents and trades unionists. Hundreds of people thronged Katharine Street to say “No to 15per cent”, in what some reckoned was the biggest protest seen at Croydon Town Hall for at least 40 years.

Inside the Town Hall Chamber, the meeting began with two powerful speeches representing the 25,000-plus Croydon residents who have signed a petition, started by Inside Croydon, that opposes the 15per cent Council Tax increase and to seek fair funding for Croydon.

The council insisted that the petitioners could not speak from the floor of the Chamber, but must address the meeting from the Public Gallery, conveniently putting them out of sight of at least one-third of the councillors.

Below me in the Press Gallery – which after being closed since the 2020 lockdown has been reopened by the council only after lobbying from Inside Croydon – Mayor Perry did his best to avoid looking at the petitioners, keeping his head lowered and shuffling papers. The Tory Mayor had, to his credit, moved to allow the petition to be heard at a budget-setting meeting – an unprecedented departure from council procedures. But he was clearly uncomfortable with what he was hearing.

You can read the excellent speech given by Ken Towl here, but no less impressive was the seconding speech by GMB trade union officer Rachael Baylis, who spoke of her experience in representing Croydon council staff – many of whose pay is so low that they are also entitled to in-work benefits and are struggling to make ends meet.

Out of sight: many in the Town Hall Chamber could not see the petitioners as they delivered their speeches

The Mayor defended the 15per cent “Perry Premium” Council Tax increase because he was “taking this decision to solve the council finances”.

But the extra £22million raised by the Council Tax hike does not solve anything. As reported previously, Croydon Conservatives’ strategy is reliant on a not-yet-secured £540million debt write-off that would reduce loan repayments by £38million per year. That, and the not inconsiderable £224million new government bail-out that Mayor Perry has asked for, dwarfs the extra raised in Council Tax.

The real question that the Mayor has no answers for is what a 15per cent Council Tax hike will do to the lives of the ordinary, hard-working people of Croydon.

Perry’s budget papers include an assumption that Council Tax collection rates will fall as a result of the sharp increase, but it is only projected to drop by 1per cent. Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group on the council, asked whether that was a realistic estimate, and on what assumptions the 1per cent drop had been forecast. There was no coherent reply.

Throughout the meeting, Mayor Perry proudly promoted a £2million “hardship fund”, a fund using public money to deal with the hardship his proposals would create. But under questioning from Labour and Green councillors, neither Perry nor his cabinet member for finance, Jason Cummings, could explain the process for receiving hardship support from the fund, nor what criteria would be used to determine eligibility.

Hardship fund: Jason Cummings

Cummings claimed that his fund represented “a full 10per cent” of the total rise in Council Tax. Cummings’ calculator must be on the blink since £2million is just 9per cent of the extra raised by exceeding the Council Tax cap with a 15per cent hike. It is a grim irony, though, that this would be far from the first time in council history that the councillor in charge of finances is presenting misleading figures to council.

Rowenna Davis, the councillor who chairs the scrutiny committee, was commended by both sides of the chamber for attending council when heavily pregnant (the baby is due any day now).

She explained painstakingly that only government intervention could deal with the deep-seated structural debt that Croydon has built up – a joint enterprise involving successive administrations and more than a decade of austerity from a Conservative government.

Davis also questioned why an equality impact assessment on the budget was only produced after the scrutiny process had concluded. Questioning from Thornton Heath councillor Tamar Nwafor exposed that there will be a disproportionate impact of the 15per cent tax rise and cuts on Croydon’s black and ethnic minority communities.

The council budget also includes a further £36million of cuts to services.

The argument of the Croydon Conservatives is that it would require another £20million more cuts on top of that – and that would be “unsafe”. Feigning concern at this prospect, Adele Benson, the Conservative councillor elected in New Addington last May, asked a clearly patsy question of how an extra £20million of cuts “would affect the most vulnerable”. She offered no concern or question about the impact of the £36million cuts that are due to happen, and that she later voted for.

Scrutiny: Rowenna Davis remarked on how her committee was denied an equalities report

The Conservative claims of horror at the prospect of further cuts is slightly undermined by the fact that next year (2024-2025), they have pencilled in yet another £27million of service cuts, on top of the £36million this year. Andy Stranack, the Conservative cabinet member from Selsdon, spelt out the consequences: “A smaller council that focuses on statutory services.” And even those are being cut.

More than once during the evening, Conservative councillors appeared to be reaching back to Thatcher and utilising her “TINA” catchphrase – “There Is No Alternative”.

But as King pointed out, there must have been an alternative, because the current administration started preparing the budget in November and it was only in mid-February that the government granted the request to increase council tax by 15per cent. They obviously had a Plan B.

As the votes were cast, the budget was defeated – a victory for the thousands of Croydon residents who had campaigned against it and signed petitions, and for the hundreds who had turned out on a chilly evening.

The saga does not end there. Mayor Perry, Cummings and the council executive must now respond to councillors’ objections and present a new proposal at another meeting on March 8, next Wednesday. That meeting must approve a budget, as the statutory deadline for English councils to deliver such is March 11.

If a budget is not agreed, then the government could send in commissioners to run the council.

Our task as residents is to ensure our voices are heard and amplified between now and March 8.

So please share the petitions with your friends, neighbours and work colleagues; join the march on Saturday, and be outside the Town Hall again March 8 to say “No to 15per cent. Fund Croydon Fairly”.

SIGN THE PETITIONS HERE

Read more: The solution to Perry’s finance problem: Fund Croydon Fairly
Read more: If council budget fails to pass, expect a long night on Mar 8
Read more: 10,000 signatures! Now government has to answer our petition


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