In Harrow, every single one of our residents receives £159 less money from Central Government in Council funding than the London average. That’s £40m each year.
That’s £40m of missing money that could go towards services from street cleaning and care for the elderly to support for our most vulnerable families and children, amongst many other services.
That is why at the end of last year we launched the £159 fairer grant Campaign to get Harrow back its missing millions. Our ‘159’ fairer grant campaign to get Harrow back its missing millions has already claimed its first victory.
Harrow received £1.4m from the Transition funding the Government recently announced for Local Authorities, following on from our meetings with Government, backed up by our pragmatic approach across London.
We would not have received this funding without this time and effort. This shows that our arguments have resonated with Government – the 159 fairer grant campaign is getting Harrow our missing millions.
The only problem with this is that on one hand the Government lightens the funding blow one day, and the very next day wipes this completely out with an even bigger cut to Public Health grant funding of £1.2m.
This is what we have come to expect from David Cameron and George Osborne, as Local Councils continue to be hardest hit.
Central Government has imposed £83m of cuts on Harrow Council and our residents from 2014 to 2018. This is well over 50% of our controllable spend on services from street cleaning and parks maintenance to care for older people, people with a disability and support for vulnerable families and children, to name just a few. Harrow and our communities deserve better.
With this tsunami of cuts we will continue to fight for a fairer grant and get Harrow its missing millions. Thank you to all residents that have supported the campaign to date.
