Wandsworth Council plans 94 per cent tax rise after Rayner’s cuts
Wandsworth Council has announced taxes will rise by 94 per cent for Band D residents after local leaders hit out at the government for cutting funding by £84m a year.
The local authority, regularly dubbed Margaret Thatcher’s favourite council because of its historically low-levels of council tax, will make Band D council taxpayers stump up £958 more from next year.
Local leaders said they had already made £529 in savings for each Band D taxpayer in order to make up for a gap it has to fill in funding.
The Conservative-run council says that it had to fill a spending gap of about £1,434 for average households in the area. More than third of the total is accounted for by government funding cuts and the rest of the costs are sourced from inflation and inherited plans from the previous Labour administration.
A Tory source in the council said the authority had to “either balance the books through tax rises or face bankruptcy”.
Deputy leader of Wandsworth Peter Graham, said council members “do not want this” and “do not take this decision lightly”.
“Residents should not be left to carry the cost of an unfair funding system,” Graham said.
“That is why we are fighting hard at the heart of Government for a fairer deal for Wandsworth, and why we have made a clear case ahead of the Autumn Budget that our borough should not be punished for running efficient services and keeping council tax low.”
‘Tax hikes or bankruptcy’
Labour MPs in the area including Marsha De Cordova, Rosena Allin-Khan, and Fleur Anderson have hit back at the council, telling authority leaders they would not support Wandsworth’s bid to request more funding.
In a letter, the MPs said they could not “support a narrative that seeks to rewrite the recent financial history of Wandsworth Council or shift responsibility for damaging choices that are being made by the current Conservative administration”, according to the news website Politicshome.
They argued that the council already had been “carefully managed” under the previous Labour administration.
Communities secretary Angela Rayner has proceeded with a plan to update formulas for distributing local government funding grants offered by the government. This has involved redistributing cash away from areas in London to regions in the North of England.
Rayner argued that the old system was “unfair” for deprived councils while low-tax areas have said they have been targeted rather than rewarded.
Most councils were told they were not able to raise council taxes by significant amounts although Wandsworth was one of few areas that were given the go-ahead to raise taxes further.
Funding to Wandsworth has been cut by about 40 per cent, with local leaders saying the loss equates to more than the council’s entire budget for parks, libraries, leisure centres and street cleaning.
Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, which have also been run by Tory administrations since May’s election, have joined Wandsworth in pushing for the government to review its funding models and ensure there is greater retention from tax receipts generated locally.