Six Months leading Hounslow

CON/DEM ATTACK ON HOMES, INCOMES AND SERVICES
Another week, another government announcement that was never trailed in any manifesto. Together they are set to throw people out of work, hold back economic growth and damage the public services we all rely on. The Tories and Lib Dems have broken their promise to be fair; with tax increases and benefit cuts that will hit hardest at the people who can least afford them.

BENEFITS AND HOUSING CUTS
• Capping Housing Benefit for private tenants when there is a shortage of homes, so landlords will find non HB tenants and many will be made homeless
• cuts in HB for those occupying a large home, anyone unemployed more than 12m, those with non-dpendent adults living with them
• Cuts to benefits for disabled people
• Halving the capital budget for new Council and HA housing
• Cuts to working family tax credits
• Ending of Educational Maintenance Allowance (for over 16s staying in education)
• Forced free labour schemes for those long-term unemployed
• Ending of the Building Schools for the Future scheme

FIGHTING FOR HOUNSLOW
The Labour team now leading Hounslow Council have vowed to do whatever it can to protect local services. We are working hard to protect our most vulnerable residents and will do everything we can to prevent these cuts causing lasting harm to our residents. It won’t be easy and we are going to have to make some difficult choices.

The October spending review hit local Councils hard. Hounslow expects to need to find savings of around £60m over 4 years, and that this must be “front loaded” ie £18m in each of the next two years and around £12m in the subsequent ones.

Efficiency savings are not going to deliver £18m savings, we will have to agree to service cuts. Whilst we will do what we can to protect jobs, at this level of cut, redundancies will be inevitable. We have met the staff side Unions and have agreed a severance scheme that is more generous, and fairer than the one used by the Tory/ICG administration.

We have a timetable that ensures proper consultation including a residents' panel meeting, briefing meetings in each area, and a special edition of Hounslow Matters.
We are also going to be using You Choose – an online public participation tool that allows residents to “play” with different budget options (eg spending more on parks and less on childrens services.) It described what the impact of your choices would be both on those service, but also on the Council Tax. We will be launching the Hounslow version very soon but you can see the Redbridge one on www.redbridge.gov.uk.

We welcome constructive comments on the choices we have to make - what services could be cut back and which should be protected at all costs?