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Londoners to get 'more bang for their buck' with Mayor's £12m budget cut
Pippa Crerar, City Hall Editor22.07.08
Boris Johnson is to cut the City Hall budget by £12 million to help deliver on his pledge to give Londoners "more bang for their buck".
The Mayor will spend the cash saved on other priorities, including preventing youth crime and improving quality of life for Londoners.
The saving, representing 15 per cent of the Greater London Authority's £79million budget, is intended to show that the Mayor is serious about offering value for money.
It comes after his forensic audit panel, headed by former Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft, claimed tens of millions of pounds of public money had been squandered by the London Development Agency under Ken Livingstone.
The panel said expenditure and staffing at the building did "appear inflated" and could be slashed without risk to other services.
The £12 million saving was revealed in the Mayor's annual budget guidance for the GLA, published today.
It pledges to increase the GLA budget, which excludes City Hall's contribution to the Olympics, by 1.25 per cent a year until 2011-12.
There will also be below inflation increases for the Metropolitan Police Authority's £2.6billion budget and the Fire Service's £425million budget. Mr Johnson has already scrapped the Londoner newspaper to raise £3 million to pay for 10,000 street trees and spruce up run down parks.
"Tackling crime, delivering value for money and improving the quality of life in London are my administration's top priorities," said the Mayor.
"Crime is the number one issue for Londoners. Tackling the long-term root causes of crime and violence and ensuring a visible police presence on the streets must become the priority for the entire GLA group."
On delivering greater value for money, Mr Johnson said there were a series of areas where the GLA and the London Development Agency could be improved and made to work far more efficiently. He added that he had taken a series of decisions to improve the quality of life in London since he was elected in May. "I will continue this work to improve everyday life in the capital with better housing and protection for open spaces," he said.
The guidance set out the Mayor's priorities for the next year: delivering value for money and better quality of life for all Londoners; prioritising measures to help reduce carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2025 and promote open green spaces; supporting the delivery of the London 2012 Olympics and its legacy; delivering the Mayor's revised Housing Strategy; implementing the living wage for London; and promoting equality in the workforce.
Mr Johnson's first budget will go out for consultation in December and will be presented to the London Assembly at the start of next year.
He has to secure the approval of the Assembly for his budget, but is likely to have to cut deals with non-Conservative members to get it through.
Reader views (15)
Sarah, London - two thirds of the Assembly have to vote against the budget to get it changed, therefore 16 Assembly Members have to vote against Mayor Johnson's budget. As there are only 14 in opposition, even if they all ganged up, it would take 2 Conservative Assembly Members voting against their own Mayor to knock back the budget.
- Steve, London
Why have you closed the Comment section on City hall Cuts? was it because of all the bad comments this was getting?
- Sean Kirwin, London
Its a bit early to say that Boris has delivered. Shouldn't you wait to see whether he can find his savings and keep all of his promises. Even Margaret Thatcher failed to keep her promises to cut waste in her first term and eventually put up taxes during a recession that she caused.
- Bill Basing, Shepherds Bush
Sorry to hear you believe in slavery, Kate. Working 24/7, come on.
- Gary Wilson, Victoria, Canada
Damian: Exactly, the conservatives only have 11 of the 25 seats, leaving 14 to the other candidates. One of the Standard blogs a couple of months ago mentioned that the non-conservatives had banded together to prevent the Tories from enjoying a majority.
- Sarah, London
To answer the question posed by 'Mark Lee, Vauxhall', you have to have some grasp of economics.
If Boris does not ensure the Met Police Authority budget is below inflation level, then the increased amount of money paid out will increase inflation even further.
This is what happened in the 1970s- inflation increased, so prices increased, so people wanted more pay, and the increased money from the increased pay made inflation go up even more.
- Duncan Schofield, Harrow, London, UK
Mikko takala
What has it got to do with you? Why don't you try and sort your own problems out in Scotland? Its not as if you don't have plenty of them.
- James Hennessy, london england
To St, London who asks if any other political party mayor could do these things, I would answer no. And I don't envision Boris doing them either. This is just talk, like everything about that man.
Remember, he's supposed to work 24 hours a day for us but within the first month was off on holiday cruising around in a yacht.
- Kate, London, UK
Re: "Mr Johnson has already scrapped the Londoner newspaper to raise £3 million to pay for 10,000 street trees and spruce up run down parks. "
Comment by the Green Party on this: -
"Boris Johnson appears to have spent twice over some of the savings made from scrapping Ken Livingstone's free newspaper 'The Londoner'. Johnson valued the savings at over £10m for his mayoral term. But figures compiled by Jenny Jones, Green Party London Assembly Member, show that the Mayor has already committed over £16m worth of spending against his 'savings'.
Finance may not be Boris' strong point, but surely even he must realise that once spent, money stays spent. It cannot be conjured back into existence by sleight of hand. If this is the Mayor's idea of efficiency and value for money, I hate to think of his idea of poor financial management.
The Mayor must come clean. His figures show that over four years, he will spend £10.92m worth of savings with £6m on Safer transport teams, £6m on park improvements, £4m on street trees, and £.08m on a Mayoral Prize for low carbon technology - a total of £16.08m."
And this in the context of Boris appearing to have actually spent more than half a million pounds on his transition team...
- Dave, London
I am puzzled as to why you say the Mayor has to 'cut deals with non-Conservative members' to get the Budget through. The law is clear that the Budget can only be amended by other parties when they have two-thirds of the voting power or more on the Assembly. The Budget passes without amendment with the votes of one-third of the Assembly. The Tories, with 11 out of 25 seats, have more than a third of the votes. So the Mayor has no need to do any deals at all, unlike the Mayor in the last administration who did a deal with the Greens.
- Damian Hockney, London, UK
Come on Mark Ken wasted millions of our money I'm thinking of Met Police grants for gay carnivals and other pet causes that have nothing to do with policing.
- Cockney Rebel, Plaistow
Ask yourselves this; could you picture a Labour, Lib Dem or Green Party mayor doing something like this?
- St, London
You do not "deliver on" a pledge: you "keep" it! Please use English rather than Yanklish.
- Arthur Norton, Ipswich, England
"Crime is the number one issue for Londoners. Tackling the long-term root causes of crime and violence and ensuring a visible police presence on the streets must become the priority for the entire GLA group."
And yet in the same article it states that the Metropolitan Police Association will be getting below inflation increases in funding?
Why is Boris being allowed to get away with this?
- Mark Lee, Vauxhall
Once again Boris delivers. Why is Ken allowed a happy and rich retirement? He should be pursued for the wastage (or worse) under his discredited regime.
- Mikko Takala, Drumnadrochit, Scotland
