Mayor to increase council tax to fund 500 additional PCSOs

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today set out his plans to protect and improve London’s vital public services by increasing council tax to help fill the funding gap left by the Government for policing, transport and the London Fire Brigade.

Publishing his draft budget for the Greater London Authority Group, the Mayor will announce that, as expected by Government, he’s planning to increase council tax by £15 for an average ‘Band D’ property in 2023-24 to specifically invest more in policing.

This will raise an additional £29.3m, which will go directly to the Metropolitan Police Service to fund 500 additional Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) to work in local neighbourhoods disproportionately impacted by crime.

The new Commissioner has set out how the Met needs an additional £827m a year to have the same real-terms per-head budget as in 2010-11. After a decade of austerity, Ministers are still refusing to provide the full investment in policing London desperately needs. According to the Home Office’s own review, Government funding for the Met’s capital city policing duties is currently short by £159m.

Over the last six years, the Mayor has had to step in to fill the gap as much as possible by investing record amounts from City Hall to support the police. This has enabled the Met to put 1,300 more officers on the streets, expand neighbourhood policing and has helped elevate police officer numbers to the highest level in history.

The Government set strict conditions in the recent emergency funding agreement with TfL so the Mayor is indicating the fares on TfL services will have to increase by 5.9 per cent on 5 March 2023 in line with the Government’s increase to national rail fares.

The Mayor froze TfL fares for five years from 2016 to 2021, saving Londoners hundreds of pounds each year and helping to encourage public transport use. If the Mayor had chosen not to freeze fares set by TfL and instead increased them in line with inflation, they would have risen by 12 per cent between 2017 and 2020 inclusive.

Had there been no fares freeze, this would have meant that a Pay As You Go bus fare in 2023 would be £1.90 (rather than £1.75) and a Zone 1-6 peak Tube fare would be £6.50 (rather than £5.60).

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “The last thing I want to do is increase council tax at a time when many household budgets are stretched, but the Government’s refusal to provide the funding our city needs means I’ve been left with no viable alternative but to help plug the gap by raising council tax by £3.21 a month.

“Bearing down on violent crime and making our city safer for everyone remains my number one priority. The extra funding for the police will go directly towards putting an additional 500 Police Community Support Officers into neighbourhoods across London. This will help us to build on the progress we’re making to reduce violent crime in London.

“This is a challenging time for our city, with a Government that is not fully funding our public services, but I’m determined to step up so that we can continue building a greener, safer and fairer London for everyone.”

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily