During his BBC Radio London "Meet the Leader" interview with Eddie Nestor, Cllr Paul Swaddle OBE set out the scale of the funding challenge facing Westminster City Council. He said:
"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 per cent less money over the next three years."
Cllr Swaddle said the council would have to either make cuts, increase council tax, or both, warning that without action the council would "have to cut services significantly," potentially including changes seen in some boroughs outside London, such as less frequent bin collections. He said the council was running the biggest consultation in Westminster's history to establish residents' priorities, and confirmed a council tax increase was likely, though no figure had been settled. He noted the Government's own modelling assumed a minimum 75 per cent increase over the period, with some reports suggesting a figure as high as 100 per cent had been floated, though he stressed this was not a number the council was using.
Cllr Swaddle said:
"This is a terrible decision by government that will inflict significant change in Westminster in terms of the level of service we're able to offer and what we have to charge for council tax."
He argued the funding formula took no account of the fact that Westminster serves around 800,000 visitors a day on top of its 200,000 residents, cleaning up after them, policing protests, and sweeping the streets, while the council does not retain business rates paid by those visitors' spending, which go instead to central government. Asked whether other councils faced similar pressures, Cllr Swaddle acknowledged that London boroughs are sometimes seen as complaining excessively, but said Westminster's situation was distinct: it is one of only six councils nationally facing cuts of this scale, spanning three parties, three Conservative boroughs (Westminster, Wandsworth, and Kensington & Chelsea), one Labour (Hammersmith & Fulham), one Liberal Democrat (Maidenhead), and the City of London. He said the cuts would affect every area of the council's work, including adult social care, discounts for council taxpayers less able to pay, and business rate support for local businesses, but said the council's aim was to ensure spending reflected residents' priorities.
You can listen to the interview in full via BBC Sounds here.
