Urgent Cross-Party Task Force Convened To Resolve Deadlock  See link to video here

Last night there were unprecedented scenes as Elstree & Borehamwood Town Council failed to agree a budget and set its Council Tax precept for 2023/4.

Labour Councillors successfully forced the Tory administration back to the drawing board, accusing them of submitting a set of bizarre and incoherent last minute amendments to the budget hours before the meeting due to political panic.

In recent years the Tory Council has, in effect, operated an annual revenue deficit which it has obscured by raiding capital reserves in order to balance the books. This poor financial management has now caught up with them weeks before key local elections that are expected to see Labour make significant gains. Faced with advice from politically independent Council officers that reserves were set to drop to an unsustainable level, draft budget proposals approved by the Council’s General Management Committee showed that significant Council Tax increases were required to rectify the situation.

Hours before the Council was set to approve the budget the Conservative Group tabled a series of panic amendments including searing cuts to items such as the Council’s financial support for the Town’s annual Remembrance Sunday commemorations. The last minute amendments were slammed by Labour Councillors as “financially illiterate” and bordering on “falsifying potential revenue” by showing increased income from hall hire during a period in which the Council’s hall was actually scheduled to be closed for re-development.

Elstree & Borehamwood Town Council Labour Group Leader Cllr Richard Butler said:

“`We have been warning year after year that the Tory financial strategy of launching an annual raid on the family silver by depleting reserves to mask increasing deficits was unsustainable. Labour has a plan for a sustainable, efficient financial strategy in this town. We will eliminate wastage and end vanity projects. We will work with local business to ensure decent funding for key services. Weeks before the local elections the Tory mask has slipped.”

Cllr Jeremy Newmark who presented Labour’s response to the amended budget echoed these remarks. He accused the Conservative Group of “Cooking up these amendments on the back of a fag packet at the last possible moment”. He added: “It is time to stop running this Council like a corner sweet shop and introduce a prudent, intelligent long term financial strategy that rebuilds depleted reserves, protects key services and repairs the damage that the Tories have done”.

The Council agreed to establish a cross-party task force to urgently work up revised budget proposals. Cllrs Butler and Newmark committed to work constructively with Conservatives colleagues to “try and bring this situation back from the brink by ensuring that a new budget and council tax precept can be agreed within the next four weeks”.