Lewisham council votes down Green budget amendment at acrimonious meeting

Lewisham Council’s budget for 2026/27 was voted through, including £30m million worth of cuts and savings, with Children and Young People, and Adult Social Care and Health facing the biggest cost-cutting measures.

A 4.99% council tax hike, the maximum permitted, was also approved during the annual budget setting meeting on Wednesday 4 March and will come into force from 1 April.

The Labour administration’s budget covers front line services, investment in existing housing stock and ongoing improvements to Lewisham and Catford’s town centres, while £5.1 million has been allocated for road resurfacing and carrying out footway improvement works.

Lewisham has 54 councillors, 52 represent Labour, while two councillors have defected to the Green Party.  For the first time since 2014, the Labour council faced an opposition alternative budget amendment.

Amanda De Ryk, cabinet member for finance, resources and performance and Lewisham Labour’s mayoral candidate for the local elections in May, proposed the motion to approve the budget.

She told councillors it was her eighth budget as cabinet member, and for six years she held the role "as we were battling Conservative austerity”.  

Contrasting that with the situation under the current Labour government, she told them that this year’s budget “sets us on the path for a better future” and “increases our core spending by almost 6%”.

De Ryk said: “Our four-year capital programme to 2030 is over half a billion pounds with nearly half of that to be spent in the coming year; this means significant investment for our existing housing stock, more social housing and new temporary accommodation through our innovative Housing Acquisition Programme.”

In addition to £30m of cuts and savings in 2026/27 that the council is committed to, the budget assumes an additional £36m of savings will be found next year 2027/28.

De Ryk told Salamander in January that the council were “still facing a real terms cut to our budget” despite the Labour government’s new fair funding settlement.

The Greens proposed an alternative budget.   Councillor Jacq Paschoud, chairing the meeting, said that it had been reviewed by the council’s section 151 officer and monitoring officer who confirmed it was “sufficiently robust and lawful”.

Councillor Liam Shrivastava, leader of the Green opposition group, and Lewisham Green’s mayoral candidate for the local elections, proposed their alternative, saying “despite what Councillor De Ryk says .. (the national government) is delivering more of the same that we saw from the Tories”.

He added: “Lewisham residents are dealing with a severe cost of living crisis, stagnating wages and deepening inequality, yet Keir Starmer’s Labour government has handed local authorities a finance settlement that fundamentally fails to address the scale of the crisis in our communities.”

He said that the budget was “pushing the maximum council tax hike onto residents who can least afford it”.

Pointing to savings in adult social care, for children with complex needs and in the youth service, he questioned the Labour administration’s stated commitment “to protect the most vulnerable”.

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Greens alternative proposals

Shrivastava said the Green’s alternative budget amendment would reverse over £2.018 m of cuts by using most the £2.4m reserves which the council had originally earmarked to balance the budget.

After negotiations with the government, the council got an improved Fair Funding settlement from the government, so cancelled this use.

Shrivastava outlined the Greens proposals to replenish the reserves. They would expand the council’s housing acquisition programme by 100 properties, which they said would reduce the borough’s reliance on expensive private temporary accommodation.

They would introduce a vehicle weight surcharge on parking permits, aiming to “tackle the car-spreading of large, heavy SUVs that pose a risk to road safety, while generating a projected £1.48 m in net revenue a year to support our transport budgets”.

They would “repurpose” the original budget of £203,000 for local assemblies, which Labour has ended, to run a green participatory budgeting scheme.

“This will empower residents to unlock some of the £2 million of unspent carbon offset funding … directing it into local community energy and retrofit projects,” he said.

He also proposed a 20% cut to the salary of the Lewisham mayor, deputy mayor and senior cabinet members and an end to Lewisham’s cabinet advisory roles.

James-J Walsh, cabinet member for regeneration, argued that the council was already running a housing acquisition programme, aiming to deliver up to 300 homes for people in temporary accommodation by the end of this administration and is now planning a “bid to the Mayor of London's social and affordable homes programme .. which would deliver more than double the number of homes proposed in this amendment, while prioritising permanent social housing”.

Opposing the Greens’ amendment, he said: “You cannot responsibly build a council budget on savings that do not yet exist”.

Louise Krupski, deputy mayor and cabinet member for environment, transport and climate action, opposed the Green’s vehicle weight surcharge proposal, which would target SUVs.  She said the council already has “emissions-based permit pricing .. We have also introduced diesel surcharges and multi-vehicle levies”.

Her further comments suggested concerns about a backlash from motorists. 

She said the expansion of the ULEZ, “has hit more residents in Lewisham than other inner London boroughs” and mentioned “our sustainable streets programme, which asks more of vehicle owners in order to manage parking demand and improve our neighbourhoods ..

“We have to be careful not to pile additional burdens on people who still rely on their vehicles”.

Lewisham has seen an  increase in vehicle journeys and reduction in active travel over recent years.

The sustainable development committee has described their disappointment in the poor outcomes of the sustainable streets programme.

De Ryk defended the budget, arguing that the savings are “considered reforms designed to ensure services remain effective over the longer term”.

She argued that the adult social care would effectively be run more efficiently by introducing a “vacancy factor”, that the children’s services cuts were costs that had been “falling incorrectly on the council” and should be picked up by the NHS, and that the costs of youth services would be reduced as the council is now “working alongside community organisations”.

The council first announced that it needed to make £30 million worth of savings in 2026/27 last July.  It confirmed where the cuts would fall, and the planned increase in council tax by 4.99%, in February.  The maximum council tax reduction for low-income households has been reduced.

The Greens' budget amendment was voted down. 

Shrivastava was heckled as he argued that Labour's budget would impact the most vulnerable and said that  the Greens “absolutely refuse to endorse a budget that balances the books on the backs of disabled children, exhausted care workers and the young people of Lewisham” and they would abstain.

Will Cooper, cabinet member for better homes and homelessness, argued that “huge amounts of investment via the social and affordable homes funding” was now coming through from government.

He compared the Greens with Reform, saying “unlike the growing populism on the left and the right. Lewisham Labour is giving solutions rather than soundbites”.

Green opposition councillor Hau-Yu Tam pointed to the Labour government’s record: “We cannot trust an administration which fails to challenge their own colleagues in power. Whether it's from racism and immigration to what we're seeing debated in this budget, which is Labour moving at snail's pace with their reforms ..”

She pointed out: “The mayor's allowance is £88,000. The mayor also gets a daily allowance (as a member of the House of Lords) of £371 per day.”

Labour councillors and cabinet members then lined up to make acrimonious attacks on the Green opposition.

Councillor Mark Jackson went on a bitter and personal attack of the Greens calling them “insubstantial, unserious, lightweight”, and comparing the Labour budget to the Greens’ “flimsy, lightweight display sold to you by a bunch of political opportunists and a sanctimonious hack you shouldn't trust to run a bar, let alone this council”.

Edison Huyn, cabinet member for children and young people, attacked “the sheer amount of misinformation coming from the Green Party” which he said was “insulting the hard work of officers” in developing joint commissioning reform.

The officers which Labour depend on are not political and would be available to the other political parties if they were sharing power.

Councillor Chris Barnham accused the Greens of promises to spend money without funding and “gestures” that would “collapse under audit .. residents deserve viability, not just vibes”.

Councillor Paul Bell was more conciliatory, saying “The real enemy is not in this room. Reform is the enemy we should be targeting, not each other”.

The budget was passed with the two Green councillors abstaining.

After the meeting, Shrivastava told the LDRS: “The administration’s own risk assessments and equalities analysis acknowledges the damage these cuts could have on vulnerable members of our community.

“The fact Labour voted against reversing them shows that they are no longer on the side of ordinary working people. Lewisham desperately needs change and a Green mayor and cabinet will deliver this if elected in May.”

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