Last night, Birmingham Labour published their budget proposal ahead of the March 5th full council meeting where councillors decide if they will vote for or against Labour’s budget. The Labour Council’s budget deficit has increased to approximately £380 Million since the announcement of Labour’s equal pay crisis last June. After almost a year of delays and indecision, Birmingham Labour has now decided to hit Brummies with a double whammy of increased council tax and slashed services instead of restructuring the council to protect front-line services.
Labour-run Birmingham city council has decided to increase council tax by – an inflation-busting - 21% over the next two years. This is equal to an additional £855 a year on average since labour took control of the council in 2012 on a promise not to put up council tax. Among the planned savings are the closure of 25 community libraries, £5.2 million of cuts from youth services and hundreds of redundancies. The Labour administration is also expected to announce cuts to road maintenance and a reduced waste collection service in 2025.
Labour’s financial crisis has been caused by a decade of incompetence which has seen a botched bin strike deal leading to a potential equal pay liability of up to £760 million. The previous administration had put policies in place to avoid equal pay claims mounting, but these policies were ditched in 2012 when Labour took control.
Birmingham City Council is in it’s current position due to a failure to get serious about the council budget leading to negative reserves of £680 million. The Administration has also overspent on a botched implementation of the Oracle IT system, totalling over £140 million, and failed to meet 8 out of 10 of their own savings targets in recent years.
Cllr Robert Alden (Con, Erdington), Leader of the Opposition and Birmingham Local Conservatives, said,
“Birmingham Labour have hidden the details of their devasting cuts until the last possible moment. For an administration that had promised to be open and transparent, this is sadly exactly the kind of behaviour we’ve come to expect from Labour in Birmingham – symbolically underscored by the constant refusal to publish the draft budget and the letters they have sent saying they are not going to set a balanced budget without selling the city’s assets. The Labour group has been discussing their plan to gut the city's services for a year and yet have left it until the last two weeks to tell Brummies of their plan.”
He continued,
“The impact of Labour’s double whammy of reduced services and significantly increased council tax – 21% over 2 years – will be particularly painful for residents and businesses in Birmingham. After promising a golden decade, this budget reveals Labour’s true legacy for Birmingham; fewer services, higher taxes, and more debt. Labour’s plans amount to selling your car to pay the mortgage, and then taking out an expensive loan to make up the shortfall in subsequent months. These problems have been created by Birmingham Labour, but it is Birmingham residents – and their children and grandchildren - who will pay the cost of fixing it.”
Cllr Ewan Mackey (Con, Sutton Roughley), Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Birmingham Local Conservatives added,
“The Equal Pay liability alone will cost every child in this city £2644, and that is only if Labour successfully implement a new pay structure by April next year, something they have known they needed to do for the last 6 years but failed to deliver. The overriding story of Birmingham City Council over the last decade has been a Labour Administration that has failed to listen to multiple warnings, failed to make the necessary decisions, and failed to put the interests of residents first. Because the truth is that they care more about the Labour Party brand then the residents of this City.”
Cllr Mackey finished,
“The cuts Birmingham Labour are proposing are deep and far-reaching – youth services, libraries, street cleaning, bin collections, school transport – little will go untouched and few people will be unaffected. But what we won’t see through this budget are the types of transformative changes we have been calling for the last ten years. Changes that will make big savings in back office functions whilst improving service delivery, such as sharing services with other local authorities and irradicating silo working so that residents are not faced with barrier after barrier in their interaction with the council but find solutions to their issues at a lower cost to the taxpayer. Delivering these types of changes requires the sort of leadership that has been entirely absent within the Labour Group in Birmingham, who have been consumed by factious infighting and a refusal to accept any sort of responsibility”
