Ealing Council Meeting Confirms Annual Budget

Ealing Council has approved its budget for the coming financial year, pledging extra investment in street safety, cleaner neighbourhoods and youth facilities while maintaining a council tax rate well below the national average.

The budget was passed at a full council meeting on Tuesday 3 March, with the ruling Labour administration highlighting new funding for CCTV, street lighting and fly-tipping enforcement as central measures designed to make residents feel safer.

Among the headline commitments is £860,000 to install 50 additional CCTV cameras across the borough. The council says the move is aimed at improving public confidence, particularly after dark.

A further £600,000 over three years will go towards street-lighting improvements, including design enhancements intended to improve visibility and reassurance at night. The authority has also allocated £500,000 to create “tidy teams” to remove fly-tipped waste more quickly, citing research that shows dumped rubbish can attract further littering.

The budget includes funding for 50 new alley-gating schemes to deter anti-social behaviour, as well as continued action to remove abandoned vehicles and tackle unregistered houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).

To make waste disposal easier, the council plans to introduce a touring neighbourhood household reuse and recycling service and reduce costs for garden and bulky waste collections.

Council leader Peter Mason said the measures were a response to residents’ concerns about safety. “It’s not enough for politicians to quote statistics about crime when people just don’t feel safe,” he said. “We know residents feel Ealing is a very safe borough in the day, but people need to be reassured that this is a safe borough at night.”

The council is also investing in youth provision, including five new play zones in Greenford, Perivale, Northolt, Southall and Acton. A further £1.6 million will be spent upgrading playgrounds, including the installation of floodlighting to extend their use into autumn and winter evenings.

Alongside these initiatives, the council says it continues to prioritise rising demand for children’s and adults’ social care, home-to-school transport for children with special educational needs, and support for residents in temporary accommodation — all areas where costs have been increasing sharply for local authorities across London and nationally.

Council tax will rise by 2.99%, alongside the additional 2% adult social care precept permitted by government. For a Band D property, the annual charge will be £2,138.53. Of this, £1,628.02 will fund Ealing Council’s services, with £510.51 going to the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority.

Councillor Steve Donnelly, cabinet member for inclusive economy, said the authority remained financially responsible in a challenging climate. He pointed to the number of councils elsewhere receiving Exceptional Financial Support from central government as evidence of the pressures facing local government.

He also welcomed the government’s move to a three-year local government financial settlement, arguing that it would provide greater stability and allow the council to develop “invest to save” proposals aimed at ensuring long-term financial sustainability.

Like many London boroughs, Ealing faces growing demand in statutory services, particularly social care and housing support, which have consumed an increasing share of council budgets over the past decade. At the same time, core funding from central government has fallen in real terms since 2010, placing additional strain on local finances.

The Ealing Liberal Democrats put forward what they said was a fully costed amendment, which identified £1.6 million in savings to fund alternative priorities.

Central to their proposal was keeping open 10 children’s centres the council plans to close. The Liberal Democrats argued that closures would disproportionately affect vulnerable families and reduce access to early-years support.

Their amendment also proposed cancelling the council’s Stop and Shop Plus scheme, expanding recycling facilities — including for flats above shops — introducing community skips to tackle fly-tipping, increasing street cleaning and leaf removal, carrying out more pavement and road repairs, and commissioning an independent review of the Lammas Park sustainable drainage (SuDS) scheme.

Liberal Democrat councillor Gary Busuttil, the party’s shadow finance spokesperson for performance and council honesty, criticised the administration for voting down what he described as “fully costed and practical measures”. He said the alternative budget would have prioritised frontline services and high streets.

The Labour administration rejected the amendment, maintaining that its own budget strikes the right balance between protecting essential services and investing in visible improvements to neighbourhoods.

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