Bromley Council Budget: Conservatives Wasting Taxpayers' money on ULEZ legal fees to make a political point

At the meeting of Bromley Council on 27th February, the Council voted in favour of a 4.99% increase in Council Tax for 2023-2024. Bromley Liberal Democrats have proposed an amendment to the Budget to make it fairer, greener and less wasteful of taxpayer money.

“The changes we proposed are modest in comparison to the size of the overall budget, but we believe it sends a message to many groups who feel ignored and overlooked that the Council is aware of the challenges they’re facing and wants to start on a path to resolving those problems,” said Lib Dem Leader Julie Ireland. “We’re conscious of the huge challenges faced by local authorities to maintain even basic services given the reduction in support from the Conservative Government.”

The changes proposed by the Liberal Democrat group included setting up a Community Resilience fund to help voluntary organisations who are struggling to continue their work in the face of increased costs. They also propose rescuing Community House and Beckenham Public Halls from public sale and instead helping community groups purchase the properties to protect them for future community use. 

Cllr Chloe-Jane ross explained the group's opposition to the Conservative proposal to spend £140,000 on legal fees to fight the expansion of ULEZ to outer London. "While we support the idea of ULEZ we do not agree with rolling it out to outer boroughs while we're in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Instead the London Mayor should give outer London boroughs more time to prepare, increase the proposed scrappage allowance for those who will have to replace their cars, and make real investments in our woeful public transport. But we cannot support the Conservative's decision to spend money on legal fees - Lib Dem run Sutton are fighting the expansion just as hard but without throwing taxpayers' money away to make a political point.  "

“We want this £140,000 to be used to pay for school streets and air quality monitoring, plus low cost interventions on road safety - three actions that could really help to deliver improved air quality in Bromley and protect our most vulnerable residents.”

The key points of the Liberal Democrat Budget amendment are :

• Set up a Community Resilience Fund - a special fund targeted at helping groups, organisations and individuals who are already supporting residents but who are struggling to continue because of the pressures of the cost of living crisis.
• Protect our Community Assets - stop the sale of Community House Bromley and Public Halls Beckenham and help community groups in their efforts to purchase the properties, including providing low cost loans and carrying out overdue repairs.
• Use the money from the ULEZ legal fund to pay for ANPR cameras to support School Streets, fund an additional 10 air quality monitors at locations without effective monitoring, and fund low cost road safety measures for areas with specific road safety concerns that have not been included in the schemes in Bromley funded by TfL
• Provide support for our youth services by initially funding 5 new youth workers while working with youth organisations to plan for the opening of youth centres across the borough.
• Recruit a dedicated officer to ensure that every service has support for residents who find council services difficult to access because of their lack of access to digital technology whether computers or mobile phones.
• Install cash-free parking meters that take card payment but do not require the use of a parking app at key town centre locations in response to the Conservatives’ decision to force people to use the RingGo app to pay for parking.

 
The full details of the source of funding for these proposals are enclosed in the full text of the amendment available here. You can hear Cllr Ross explain our position on ULEZ here.