Barnet Council planning £22 million in cuts and another significant hike in council tax to tackle spending crisis
Barnet residents should know by late February the full extent of the expenditure cuts which will have to be imposed by the borough council to reduce a looming budget deficit which could still top £50million.
Such is the size of the potential financial shortfall that the council is already proposing a council tax increase of 4.98 per cent for 2025-26.
This would be made up of a 2.98 per cent increase in general council tax plus an additional 2 per cent which would be added to meet the cost of adult social care.
In addition to the 4.98 per cent rise proposed by Barnet Council, residents will also have to pay the Greater London Authority levy.
Therefore, the total council tax increase for 2025-26 is likely to match or exceed the 5.8 per cent increase which was applied for the 2024-25 financial year.
Some cost savings have already been implemented from the start of 2025.
All pay and display machines at car parks – see above at Moxon Street — have been taken out of service.
Copies of daily newspapers are no longer being provided at libraries. However, some newspapers are available to library users to see online
Residents can have their say on the spending cuts and proposed council tax increases in a budget consultation which continues until 22 January.
https://www.engage.barnet.gov.uk/budget-consultation-2025-26
To balance its 2025-26 budget the council needs to find £74.2 million partly because of rising demand for expensive children’s and adults’ services.
Council departments have identified £22 million worth of cuts and additional sources of revenue.
The precise size of the remaining budget shortfall – currently estimated at £52 million – will depend on a government settlement for 2025-26.
Final decisions on the budget for the next financial year will be decided at a meeting on 25 February.
As from 2 January all pay and display machines at Barnet Council car parks were taken out of service – a decision which will deliver a saving of £86,000 in maintenance costs over the coming year and a long-term saving of £500,000 in future replacement and maintenance costs.
In future all car park users will have to pay by phone or text by the PayByPhone App or by paying in cash at more than 100 retailers in the borough which offer the PayPoint service.
According to the council only 7 per cent of transactions at its car parks in 2023-24 made use of the pay and display machines for credit card payments.
Withdrawal of the ability to pay by credit card, following the removal of the payment by cash facility, will disappoint some drivers, especially the elderly, who find it difficult to use the PayByPhone App.
Ceasing to provide copies of national newspapers in libraries will be another blow, especially for library users who cannot afford the cost of purchasing a daily paper.
Library users will be able to go on line to read The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and Daily Mail.
Another cost-saving measure that might be introduced in the borough’s libraries is an even greater reliance on self-service opening or a further reduction in opening hours.
8 thoughts on “Barnet Council planning £22 million in cuts and another significant hike in council tax to tackle spending crisis”
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40+ years of unregulated free markets has failed and we are paying the price. We are getting poorer and more divided every year. If you don’t invest in the future and simply sell everything off to friends registered in the Cayman islands, it’s not a surprise when nothing works and the country ends up massively in debt.
Fair point.
My point still stands though – that laying the blame at Labour’s door for a problem that has been many years in the making is a lazy view.
You’re confusing the General Election for the Local Election. We’ve had a Labour council since 2022 (after decades of it being a Conservative stronghold), so they’ve “been in the building” for more than a year at the local level.
Some people might be having a right go at the Labour-run Barnet Council for apparent mismanagement for these kind of decision, etc, etc. Now I don’t agree with hiking the car parking charges. However, Labour wouldn’t be doing this if the Tories hadn’t frozen Council tax bills for residents, cut services and dipped into the reserves. That’s the reality.
See FYI:
https://www.barnet.gov.uk/search?search=council%20tax&sort=search_api_relevance&order=desc&f%5B0%5D=type%3Aoblg_news&page=0
This is a legacy of years of national policy. Blaming Labour, who have been in the building less than a year, is laughable.
For years, the electorate has supported the dismantling of the public sector in favour of contracting out to private companies.
Surprise, surprise, we now find ourselves picking up an extortionate bill while the quality of service has got progressively worse.
Labour council what do you expect. Always been wasteful. How much more are we expected to keep paying in council tax.
I wonder what the total bill was for the resurfacing of Salisbury Road? It was supposed to take 5 days but ended up taking 5 weeks (more if you include the extra work between Dec and March to fix all the other issues caused by the work). Had the residents concerns been taken seriously the 384 buses would never have been allowed to use our road, and the road would never have been damaged. Which, I imagine, would have saved the council/tax payer a small fortune.
And what about the tax payer having to foot the bill to install all the Virgin infrastructure (because Virgin didn’t want to)? In our road there was an initial uptake of Virgin but many (myself included) have now ditched it in favour of cheaper alternatives, so the cables are now just sitting there doing nothing.
Then there’s the various electrical charging points in the middle of the pavements which have probably been used about half a dozen times since they’ve been active (if that). And the extra CCTV cameras throughout the High Street!
Anyway, just a few recent examples of council tax being wasted. If money was so tight why were any of these even considered?!
We’re already one of, if not “the” highest taxed boroughs in the UK (definitely the highest if you include all the stealth taxes and money raising scams they participate in, like the new CCTV cameras outside Barnet College that point down the hill to catch drivers with their wheels 1cm over the yellow grid lines at the east end of Barnet Parish Church).
They should NOT be allowed to increase the council tax just because of their failings and their inability to balance the books by spending money they don’t have on projects that are a complete waste of money. We’re their bosses so I say we fire them and get somebody else in who can.