Cllr Paul Swaddle OBE, Leader of Westminster City Council, gave a wide-ranging interview to BBC Radio London's Eddie Nestor as part of the station's "Meet the Leader" series, 125 days into his leadership.
On council funding, Cllr Swaddle said Westminster faces one of the toughest financial settlements of any London borough.
The Government is cutting the council's annual funding from £219 million by £100 million, a real-terms reduction of 46 per cent over the next three years. He noted Westminster is one of only six councils nationally facing cuts at this level, spanning three parties: three Conservative boroughs (Westminster, Wandsworth, and Kensington and Chelsea), one Labour (Hammersmith and Fulham), one Liberal Democrat (Maidenhead), and the City of London. He said the council would have to consider both service cuts and a council tax rise, with the Government's own modelling assuming a minimum 75 per cent increase, though he stressed no final figure had been decided. Cllr Swaddle pointed out that Westminster serves around 800,000 visitors a day on top of its 210,000 residents, but does not retain business rates paid by visitor spending.
"The Labour government's stitched us up.
"We get £219 million from government a year. They're cutting it by £100 million.
"So we will get 46 percent less money over the next three years.
"They take no account of the fact that there's only 200,000 residents, but we service 800,000 visitors a day. We clean up their rubbish. We look after the protests. We sweep our streets. We service everything...
"Nobody is having 46 percent cuts. Nobody else other than the few boroughs in London. Wandsworth, Kensington and Chelsea, us... Hammersmith and Fulham... and Maidenhead. There's six boroughs. One's the City of London, three Conservative, one Labour, one Lib Dem."
On homelessness, Cllr Swaddle said Westminster has the worst rough sleeping position of any London borough. He said he had written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham following the PM's pledge to house all rough sleepers by Christmas, offering to work together, but said the offer had gone unanswered.
"We have the worst homelessness position in the whole of London. And that's why when Andy Burnham announced that he will have all of the homeless in by Christmas, that I wrote to him and said, 'Right, come to Westminster, help solve it here, and we'll work together.' He hasn't come back to me. We haven't seen any action in Westminster, and it's not that long till Christmas."
On enforcement against counterfeit and fraudulent shops, Cllr Swaddle said the council was working with HMRC to tackle businesses using premises to launder money and avoid paying business rates and VAT. He also confirmed the council has issued nearly £250,000 in fines to dockless bike operators since beginning enforcement.
"What we are seeing... is those shops that are, let's say, less than honest and less than reputable... we're working with HMRC to force against those to make sure that the business rates are paid because it's being used as a way of laundering money. It's a way of effectively running up debts.
"My view is simple. Al Capone had to be done on tax returns because he couldn't be done on anything else. I'll find a way to do them.
"We fined them nearly quarter of a million pounds in fines since we started, and their behavior is changing." (referring to dockless bike operators)
On a widely reported case involving an elderly St John's Wood resident's street garden, Cllr Swaddle clarified that the council's enforcement notice concerns a bench, not the garden or plant pots, following complaints of antisocial behaviour and drug use at the site, and said the council would help the resident move the bench into her own garden.
"The bench is what's being enforced against, not the plant pots. The plant pots can stay. The bench needs to go. She can move it into her garden. We can help her move it into her garden, but it's gotta go from where it is. It's on the highway, and there's people sat on it late at night taking drugs, causing anti-social behaviour."
On transport, Cllr Swaddle repeated the council's call for the Night Tube to run on Thursdays as well as Fridays and Saturdays, and said he had raised accessibility improvements at Oxford Circus station directly with TfL Commissioner Andy Lord.
On the council's 2022 "Marble Arch Mound" project, widely criticised at the time, Cllr Swaddle acknowledged it as a mistake and said it was time to move on.
"It's something that we're not gonna be proud of. But it's equally, it's time to move on and look to the future."
