Dear <<First Name>>,

The council's budget was agreed last week. 

Since 2010 the council has worked hard to make £148m in savings  (£190m when you factor in population growth) but we still have to save an extra £39m by 2023. The Conservative re-election in December is likely to mean more cuts to the council’s budget in years to come.

This Labour Budget safeguards frontline services and invests in protecting our most vulnerable residents while continuing to deliver the promises we made to local people.

As a result, we have been able to protect and improve services like our Idea Stores, leisure centres, libraries and children’s centres as well as investing in measures to improve our borough and protect our most vulnerable residents for example offering free school meals and a 100% council tax discount for the poorest households.

This Budget protects spending on resident’s top priorities. We will:

• Invest an extra £7.2m in children’s social care and SEND with a further £12.4m supporting vulnerable adults.

• Continue to fund additional police officers to keep our streets safe and tackle drug crime.

• Deliver new council homes and thousands more new affordable homes.

• Provide free school meals for all primary school pupils in the borough.

• Clean up our streets with a new in-house waste service.

• Protect the poorest with 100% council tax discount and our multi-million pound Tackling Poverty fund.

• Support thousands more local people into work or training.

• Transform our neighbourhoods through our Liveable Streets programme to cut down on rat running, improve air quality and make our roads more pedestrian friendly.

Continued cuts will affect services. As well as this year's budget councillors agreed a process to examine savings in the next few years my speech to the chamber focused on the need to improve the transparency around those savings, so the council truly understands what it is losing when funding choices are made. You can see that speech by clicking here.

Coming up in Limehouse

• Wednesday 4th March and Saturday 7th March - Come and see the latest plans for the 'old portakabin' site on Gill Street

• March 12- The application for De Paul House on Commercial Road will be heard by the council's Development Committee

• Wednesday March 23rd- Tower Hamlets Cabinet will (hopefully) be approving the plans for the structural repair of Malting & Brewster Houses

Please feel free to visit me at my weekly surgery at Limehouse Youth Hub; on Saturdays from 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Please let me know if you are coming as they are really busy at the moment.

Best wishes,

James King
Labour Councillor for Limehouse
 
P.S. I want as many people in Limehouse to know how I’m working for them. Please pass this email on to your friends and neighbours and encourage them to sign up for future updates.