Leader's letter

Leader's letter

2011/2012 message

This year, we are freezing your council tax following 3% reductions in the previous four years, making our bills the fourth lowest in the country. The council's share of a band D bill is £811.78.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of London is freezing his share at £309.82, making the overall total £1,121.60 for a band D property.

Like all councils, we are having to make substantial savings in response to the UK's national debt burden. Locally our challenge is to save £65 million by 2014/15.

My promise to you is that we will do everything we can to protect frontline services by making every pound and penny go further. We will do this by restructuring and reforming services so that we take out as much unnecessary cost as possible. For example, by combining services with Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea we will be able to cut senior management costs in half. We are driving a harder bargain with suppliers on the prices we are charged, on everything from residential care places to IT and road surfacing materials.

While we are cutting costs, we are also continuing to cut council debt by selling assets. In eight years my aim is to have cut H&F's debt from £169 million to £80 million, which will save us roughly £8 million a year on servicing debt including costly interest payments. That money will be spent on frontline services instead.

Unlike many neighboring councils we are not proposing to close libraries or children's centres but we do need to reconfigure the way we deliver local public service if we want to secure a strong future for H&F.

Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh
Leader, Hammersmith & Fulham Council