Small Businesses are the lifeblood of Harrow.
As any business owner will know, if half of your income is taken away, you will have to make some incredibly tough decisions to keep your business going. This is the position that the Tory Government has put Harrow Council in. Our budget for running services from street cleaning to care for older people has had £83m of cuts imposed on it from 2014 to 2018 – this is over 50% of our controllable spend.
However we will not be taking these cuts lying down. We have made £1m of savings by cutting senior managers, shared services with other councils to reduce costs and have started an ambitious once in a generation programme to Build a Better Harrow, through regenerating our high streets, building affordable homes and new schools for our families. This will also help raise money for the Council so we can continue to provide the services that residents rely on.
Nothing shows our business like approach better than being recently awarded as the best small business friendly Borough in London. This is for our work on training local apprenticeships to get our young people into work, setting up Trader’s association, and securing money to improve our high streets. Despite the cuts we face, this important part of the Council’s work will be protected in the upcoming budget. Other areas of the Council’s budget that will be protected include nearly £10m for freedom passes and nearly £20m to care for older people and vulnerable children.
We will always stand up for the residents of Harrow. Locally we will continue to protect residents from the impact of these cuts, whilst nationally we will keep up the pressure on the Tory government to protect our local policing budget and to properly fund the NHS to avert a future crisis.
Cllr David Perry
Leader of Harrow Council
