Hear the impassioned speech made at the Town Hall budget meeting on Wednesday night by union official RACHAEL BAYLIS on behalf of the 25,000 people who have already signed the petition
There is to be a further Council Tax meeting at Croydon Town Hall next Wednesday, when Mayor Jason Perry is expected to bring forward his “balance” budget with the 15per cent Council Tax increase once again, as well as £36million-worth of cuts.
There is to be another people’s protest outside the Town Hall that night, with those attending asked to start to arrive from 5.30pm.
SIGN THE PETITIONS HERE
Read more: 37-34: Mayor’s 15% Council Tax hike rejected in budget vote
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
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Powerful speech. Mayor Perry has still not backed down. We must keep up the pressure until he, and the Government, do what is necessary to avoid this devastating 15% increase going ahead.
A council tax rise of 15% is completely unreasonable. Local people & businesses must never be coerced into paying for any council’s historic past blunders. Central govt. must pay for these, and for their own historic underfunding for Croydon as well. These cumulative misjudgements (!) have combined to leave Croydon in this appalling situation. If Govt. can subsidise energy bills, Govt. can also subsidise Croydon’s council tax bills. Level up, Mr Gove, & take your foot off Croydon’s neck. Show us the money !
I wonder if anyone has done a simple graph to show how much the council spent and received in “income” from government and council tax payers (formerly known as poll tax payers, previously known as rate payers) in every year for the past 30 years?
Plus, a line on the chart to plot the equivalent value, in modern terms, of the spend then.
I think it would be very helpful to have a breakdown of the expenditure– to see at a glance how much was spent on road maintenance, refuse collection, parks, social services and education, and every other aspect of council endeavour, including the cost of staffing, and pensions for ex staff .
Then, plot the figures against typical annual incomes of perhaps three “typical residents” on various wages or salaries, and the state pension.
We could then ask “what has changed in these 30 years?”.
Many things have changed, notably education, as schools have gone independent in many funding aspects, but , for many of the services, we could see a direct correlation .
It would be useful to see trends in income and spend.
As to “Income”, I wonder too….. whether the amount of government funding is actually based on the area of streets to be swept and volume of refuse handled.
Or is based on an update of what each council asked for years ago.
How is it that councils, like premier league football clubs seem able to spend money they don’t have? And don’t talk to me about auditors who seem to turn a blind eye
Fantastic speech from Rachel – it’s telling the cameras were not allowed to pick her up and instead we were forced to look at the dithering fuck-wit elected councillors who fail at every hurdle every time.
And what is this fucking ridiculous 3min time frame – many better london councils don’t have this three minute gagging order. Why doesn’t Kerswell get off her arse and inject a bit more democracy into proceedings.
How do we put forward a vote of no confidence in Katherine Kerswell ? Does anybody know. Her massive nothingness is not helping move things forward in Croydon – it’s slowing us down. Sitting on the Penn report like some enormous Jersey cow in a field has put this borough backwards.