Have you tried Lewisham Council’s Budget Calculator? I have. It’s something that would even give a migraine to Joseph Heller. It’s a Kobayashi Maru (nerdy Star Trek reference) – an impossible situation. There is absolutely no way to balance the budget without cutting almost all of the council’s funding focal points significantly. There’s no way to balance the budget without having significant repercussions. That is if the council tax remains the same.

 

What Lewisham Council’s incredibly depressing game illustrates is that Lewisham’s budget isn’t a case of just balancing the cheque book. They’re not going to be able to get out of this without coming up with another solution. Lewisham University Hospital was almost shut down, and is in constant threat of relocation or privatisation. This is just one of the problems facing the council. Not exactly a fun position to be in. The obvious solution might be to raise council taxes. Lewisham already has a significant council tax rate. It’s Band A rate is 908.9 compared with other boroughs like Westminster, which has a rate of 453.83. Now, these are just numbers, and probably don’t mean much to you unless you work for the local council. But, they do show the vast differences between boroughs in London. Boroughs like Westminster tend to have lower taxes and provide less services, while Lewisham has higher ones, and therefore provides more services. This sounds like a fairly simple idea. However, the problem arises when more money is needed than is coming in.

 

Lewisham not only has one of the highest rising populations in London – it’s population increased by 10,000 in the last three years, and it’s currently 286,000 – but couple this with reduced government funding, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Last year, government funding was about 208 million pounds a year. In three years this will be 138.3 million, according to projections. This article wasn’t written with the sole intention of depressing you, but it does seem like “Lewisham’s next few years will be very tough”, to quote the council website.

 

Back to the solutions, increasing the council tax further might be the only option. But, the problem is that not only do people not want to pay more tax, or any for that matter, but the increased tax rates would hit the C and DE employment classes the worst, while the A and B classes would be marginally inconvenienced at the most. There are suggestions of more specified taxes like second-property taxes, overseas investment taxes, increased tax brackets for certain level of incomes, and increased taxes for businesses. These, however, aren’t always particularly popular, even in Labour boroughs like Lewisham where the C and DE classes outnumber the A and B.

 

People just don’t want to pay more tax, and a council that even mentions the unuterrable phrase “tax raise” will certainly not be re-elected. The only solution left would seem to be to share a budget with another more successful borough (like Westminster). But I doubt any of these other boroughs would be happy to comply. This is Lewisham’s Catch-22.

 

Alejandro Castillo, Prendergast Hillyfields College.