City Hall Desk

London authorities are preparing for painful cuts after the 2012 Olympic Games with the police looking at cutting a further £61 million in its budget on top of £100 million earmarked to be cut, which will lead to a "wholly different way of providing support services to the front line” to find the required savings, according to a recent statement by John Biggs AM.

In a blistering attack on the Mayors draft consultation the Budget and Performance Committee on behalf of the Assembly has said that "capital’s key services are facing year-on-year grant cuts and will have to find substantial additional savings each year until at least 2014/15 as a result".

"The Mayor is looking to protect front-line services from budget cuts but the sheer scale of the savings required will inevitably have an effect."  

John Biggs AM, Chair of the Budget and Performance Committee, said:
“Even with the measures outlined in the Mayor’s draft budget to minimise the impacts of grant reductions, substantial savings will be required in all of the GLA organisations next year and beyond.  

“We are already hearing that TfL, for example, will not be able to spend as much on lower priority areas, such as road safety and smarter travel, while the Met is forecasting that there will be fewer police officers than last year.  While this year’s draft budget has clearly worked hard to mitigate the impact of budget cuts, as these bite deeper, Londoners will feel their effects more and more.

 “The Mayor is responsible for several of London’s key services, allowing him to spread the effects of grant cuts across several large organisations. He has started to do this for 2011/12, but we want to see more evidence that the decisions he makes now are part of a long-term plan to protect services in London.”

At Transport for London (TfL) the scale of required savings is larger still with a reduction in its grant of £2.17 billion over the next four years.  Next year’s grant alone will be £193 million less than under the previous settlement with government.  TfL has already committed to making savings of around £5 billion to 2017/18, but this additional funding shortfall means TfL will need to find a total of £7.2 billion (8.2 per cent) in savings.

Fire services nationally are facing a 25 per cent cut in grant over the next four years, although the actual settlement figures for London are only known for the first two years.  Next year’s grant for London’s fire services will be cut by £9 million and £10.9 million in savings must be found.  However, larger cuts are anticipated in future years and the Fire Brigade is beginning to look at how more substantial savings can be made.

During its analysis of the Mayor’s budget plans, the Committee heard about plans for reforming structures and service delivery, including sharing some back-office functions, that will be needed if the organisations are to meet longer-term savings requirements.  The response calls for additional information on future funding expectations and asks the Mayor to respond to questions about how the decisions he has made fit into a strategic plan for future budget decisions.