This year is my tenth as a councillor. It’s a role I love, because in it I get to work with brilliant people from every part of our community. Over the last decade I’ve seen some amazing things achieved.
New libraries, leisure centres, parks, community hubs and mental health services opened. Our school results going from strength to strength and more and better jobs created across our borough.
However, there are also things that have got harder and harder. One is setting our council budget.
Since David Cameron and Nick Clegg had their love-in in the Downing Street rose garden back in 2010, we have seen funding for our council cut by nearly two thirds.
The story has been the same ever since. A host of Conservative and Liberal Democrat minsters may have come and gone but for the people of Southwark it has always meant the same thing – more cuts to our local services imposed by two parties that simply don’t care about the impact on local people.
As a result, our council now has £220 million less to spend on supporting Southwark residents than we did when Labour was last in government. It’s a huge sum of money.
As a Labour-run council, we have worked incredibly hard to protect our community from these cuts. This year is no different. Over recent weeks I and my fellow Labour councillors have been going through the council’s budget with a fine tooth combe to find new ways to save money and stretch each pound further.
As a result, this month we will agree a council budget that keeps all of our libraries, leisure centres and parks open and protects funding for street cleaning, bin collection, CCTV and our community safety wardens. Something very few councils nationally have been able to do.
In fact, whilst other councils are closing libraries in Southwark we have opened six new ones since 2010, two last year alone.
It is a budget that will support our community thorough the cost of living crisis.
Southwark residents struggling with the cost of living can get £100 vouchers this winter
Funding free healthy school meals for all Southwark primary school children and for secondary school children on low incomes too.
Providing free swimming and gym use for all Southwark residents.
A £35million cost of living fund to help people struggling to make ends meet.
‘Thousands’ of Southwark residents have sought advice on how to cut down energy bills
Free money advice services, and free advice to help you cut your fuel bills too.
Free help to get a job and a dedicated Living Wage unit to help drive up the incomes of low paid workers.
Camberwell community centre becomes 300th Southwark organisation to become a Living Wage employer
As well as over £3.3million invested in over 300 community and voluntary sector project to help people across our community.
It will also be a budget that gets extra help to those who need it most. Investing £3.5million more into services for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Funding mental health services for all children who need them and a brand new Southwark Pensioners Centre.
Early plans for new Southwark Pensioners’ Centre in Camberwell unveiled
We have achieved all of this whilst keeping council tax lower than other council too. Lower than the average Liberal Democrat and Conservative run councils.
We’ve also protected our council tax reduction scheme that means residents on low incomes won’t have to pay much, or all, of their council tax. This despite the fact the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition scraped government fund for this discount over a decade ago.
In Southwark, Labour has protected that discount because we know it is lifeline for thousands of people who are struggling to make ends meet.
We have not been able to protect everything. Fourteen years of cuts continue to erode the services we can fund for our community. It’s the bit of the job I loathe, working out what we have to stop this year because the Tories want to cut taxes for big business and multi-millionaires.
With one in five councils across the country now on the brink of bankruptcy, it’s clear we can’t go on like this. In Southwark Labour has worked incredibly hard to keep the council finances robust, but we can’t do that for ever under a government that keeps cutting deeper.
We need a change. Britain needs a change. It’s time we called time on Tories and their failed government, so we can re build Britain.
This week we have seen yet more Tory MPs call for yet another Tory PM to go. I could not agree more. Let’s show them the door in twenty four, and elect a Labour government. So we can make this year the last round of Tory cuts that our community has to endure.
Our glorious leader has failed to mention that most streets are unsafe to walk down at night and he has turned Southwark into a filthy dirty borough with rubbish strewn over every street. Well done Herr Williams