The first few months of any new year for a councillor are taken up by preparation for the Council’s budget meeting.

By law each local authority is required to pass a balanced budget

The Council’s finance team will have been working for months to prepare this, and there will be a business plan of many hundred pages prepared. Various versions of it will have been produced along the way, as the Cabinet incrementally agrees cuts and savings, tweaks and changes to get to that balanced budget.

‘Scrutiny panels’ of councillors will have been challenged to look, but as usual – local Labour Council bosses block any changes.

For an opposition, preparation involves working with the Council’s finance team to understand the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the budget. Opposition councillors are able to propose amendments, but these have to be signed off by both the Council’s finance director and the legal officer – to confirm that they would not lead to an unlawful (ie unbalanced) budget if passed.

For me, honesty and transparency in politics is key.

Trust

The public’s trust in politicians and the Council is undermined by efforts to hide away those decisions that Council bosses think will be unpopular.

Unfortunately that’s exactly the approach of Merton’s Labour administration.

Secret decisions

This year we saw them desperately trying to keep a number of decisions secret:

• Spending nearly £230,000 on fancy furniture and decorating two rooms used only by Labour councillors
• Spending another £130,000 a year on doubling the number of support staff to help Labour councillors do their jobs
• Closing Eastway Day Centre, a valuable source of respite support for local carers. In late 2022 they said this was necessary because of Government cuts, but when the amount of cash they got from the Government was better than expected, they tried to make out this was a service improvement.

At one point they were even trying to secretly increase councillors’ allowances and backdate this to last May – something we said should be made public.

Early positions

In advance of the budget, each group sets out the themes they want to highlight. In September, the Conservatives wanted a Council Tax freeze, knowing this was impossible to agree to until the “Local Government Settlement” (ie the cash from central Government) had been agreed – which happens each year in December. Liberal Democrat councillors focused on prioritising generous rebates to support people through the cost of living crisis, whereas Labour told us that Council Tax had to be hiked to the max regardless of what the Government gave councils.

In December, the Lib Dem team pushed for more help on Council Tax bills – with Labour councillors blocking this.

And in February, Labour Council bosses sought to blame the 2010 Coalition Government for every unpopular decision they’ve had to make since – but voted down this commitment to transparency in decision making:

Budget night

On budget night, the Finance officers and Council bosses set out their pitch, as do all the other councillors.

Questions are asked, and amendments are proposed.

You can watch my speech here on the Council’s YouTube.

An open, competent and caring Council

As I said during my speech, there are a number of good things in the Council’s budget: landlord licensing, more support for renters, proposals for more affordable housing, plans to pay contractors the London Living Wage and mobile recycling collections.

All of these ideas have been proposals made by Liberal Democrat councillors, and often voted down by Labour councillors. But all now the things they are proudest of.

But there are also improvements they should make.

Our amendments highlighted significant budget ‘underspends’ – where every year millions in public money is not spent as it’s budgeted, and could therefore be spend on other things or protecting services.

You can find out more about our amendments to ensure everyone in Merton gets a fair deal on our website here.