Council Tax Freeze
and Budget proposals for 2010/11
Message from the Mayor
This budget report contains our spending proposals for the 2010/11 financial year, produced much earlier than usual to allow for significant public consultation. It proposes to freeze Hackney’s element of the Council Tax for a record fifth year – no other local authority in the country has achieved this.
This will be the eighth year of an administration that has expanded services to meet rising demand in crucial areas such as adult and children’s social care, and introduced new services and improvements to many discretionary yet popular areas of the Council’s operation such as parks and leisure.
For the last five years, we have been able to improve and widen services for our residents at no extra cost to local taxpayers – instead it has been made affordable as a result of efficiency measures that have achieved some of the highest annual savings in local government in the country.
This year sees an expansion of social care support for vulnerable adults and a significant increase in services for young adults with learning disabilities to cater for increased demand in both areas. The cost of recycling a wider range of materials on our estates has been funded. The running costs have been met of the increase in services to be run from an enlarged and restored Clapton Library, also money has been ring-fenced for what will be the borough’s new flagship library in Dalston.
When setting the Council’s budget, the focus is often on the several millions of completely new expenditure that will begin in the new financial year. What often is overlooked is the in excess of £1billion that is spent on services throughout the year. Although perhaps only footnotes in budget papers, pre-existing resources are often being recast and spent in ways that are not only more effective financially, but have greater effect for the service user. From street-cleaning to social care, from libraries to leisure centres, new ways of using existing resources are delivering better outcomes, whether it is parks achieving nine green flags and some of the highest resident satisfaction ratings in London, or Adult Social Care achieving some of the highest Audit Commission inspection ratings possible.
Better services and value for money for residents continue to be the over-arching priorities of this administration and are values demonstrated throughout the budget proposals.
Jules Pipe
Mayor of Hackney
Page updated: 19 Oct 2010
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