Merton budget 2025
CLLR Anthony Fairclough, Leader of the opposition
You can see the full details of the meeting on the Council's website here and the details of our budget proposals here, after Council finance officers have approved them.
You can also watch the meeting online here too (my speech is about 43 minutes into the recording!).
1. Average Council Tax breaks £2000 for the first time
Merton is putting the Council Tax up by the maximum amount, which is nearly a 5% increase. In addition, the Mayor of London has increased his part of Council Tax by 4%.
A Band D property will now pay £2,088.43 – up by £95 from last year – so the average Council Tax will top £2,000 for the first time.
Other Council Tax bands pay a percentage of the Band D amount.
2. Merton’s overall performance is patchy
Merton has not had to seek emergency Government funding, unlike the 7 London Councils (5 run by Labour, 1 by the Conservatives and 1 by Resident Association councillors).
But the Council was only able to balance their budget last year by planning to use £6 million from reserves. In the end, they needed to use about £10 million.
The Council thought temporary accommodation costs (ie costs of housing people who are evicted or made homeless who need somewhere until they find longer-term housing) would cost them about £1 million. They completely underestimated this and in the end it cost £8.1 million. Oddly for the next financial year they have budgeted only £4.6 million.
In 2022 the Council promised to build 400 new Council houses by May 2026. Their own plans say they won't have built any by 2026.
4-in-10 children in Mitcham & Morden Parliamentary constituency live in relative poverty - a figure that’s stayed the same for a decade, which was not mentioned at all by Labour during the debate.
The re-development of Morden has been pushed back with no money allocated to even commence the project in the Labour administration’s plans until 2028-29.
The Government’s National Insurance Tax rise is expected to cost the Council about £5.3 million (and it will only give them about £1.3million to cover that).
3. Labour Council bosses block anyone else’s ideas
Sadly – but not unexpectedly – Labour Council bosses voted down the three Liberal Democrat budget proposals.
- Ready to lead on the big issues: quicker, cheaper, local housing for those on the temporary housing list - using modular construction methods, ending the delay on Morden regeneration and supporting people with housing repair issues;
- Listening to people’s concerns: investing in air quality measures, improving public transport, better street lighting and more road safety measures; and
Delivering real change: new adventure playground equipment, keeping social workers in schools, a new ‘baby box’ scheme for families in temporary accommodation (like this one), and making the Council Tax Support scheme as generous as it can be.
I'm pleased to say that the councillors from the Merton Park Residents Association and Conservatives voted in favour of our proposals, showing that we are able to build cross party support for change.
Despite putting up 25 speakers on the budget, Labour councillors said very little about why they would block our proposals: the Labour Leader of the Council quibbled over the way our proposals were written, which was wording we were obliged to use, and just felt like a poor excuse.
It was a disappointing and lazy response. If they disagreed with these ideas they should say so.
We were unable to back a Conservative budget proposal, which proposed a very small reduction in the Council Tax increase.
It also called for those on the lowest incomes / certain benefits to pay some Council Tax, whereas at the moment this is covered by the Council Tax support scheme.
We did not consider this was fair or right. Indeed, we rather suspect it had been deliberately planned so that other parties could not vote for it.