"Our budget, your views" – 16 November 2014
As senior councillors on Bromley Council set their budget for 2015-16 and beyond, they want our views on what we value most. They must make further budget savings of more than £60 million in the next four years. This is in addition to cutbacks already made, so there will be very difficult decisions to be made.
Our councillors would be delighted if all RVPS members could complete the Our budget, your views survey.
Government funding – 26 October 2014
We are very concerned about the unfair funding formula applied to Bromley Council as a whole which results in very low funding from central government. Bromley has already made approximately £50 million savings in the last few years but still needs to find £65 million (a variable figure depending on the exact circumstances) from a £210 million budget by 2018/19 to balance the books.
This degree of saving looks next to impossible to achieve without resorting to ‘nuclear’ options such as:
- building many thousands of new homes either as tower blocks or on the greenbelt;
- closure of libraries;
- reduction in street cleansing frequencies and enviro-crime enforcement;
- closing parks, minimising grass cutting;
- reducing waste collections to a 3 weekly cycle;
- stop repairing roads;
- reduce salting to roads; and
- a huge increase in the council tax.
The following chart gives an indication of just how unfair the funding formula is:
We have thus written to local MPs asking for reassurance that they are bringing all possible pressure to bear upon the Government in order that a fairer funding arrangement can be implemented to ensure that Bromley’s services are not cut even further than they are today. See this document: