Mayor Ken: He's Got A Budget And He's Not Afraid To Use It (From Wandsworth Guardian)

Mayor Ken: He's Got A Budget And He's Not Afraid To Use It

9:30am Friday 23rd February 2001

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February 23, 2001 10:26: While local councils reluctantly come to terms with adding hundreds of extra pounds to council tax bills, (£150.88 for Band D) for the Greater London Authority, London mayor Ken Livingstone is unrepentant.

He has a very clear vision of the London he wants to create - and acknowledges it will take money to do it. The first thing he points out is that Londoners made a very clear choice when they voted for him last year.

Honest

I was honest at the election. I said I would increase the council tax to improve services. Frank Dobson (Labours candidate) said he would not increase them for four years. It was a fair choice.

Mr Livingstone said times have moved on. Services are the issue. People are not saying they are paying too much council tax.

The real problem is abysmally poor services. This is a scary city we live in. People are saying the money will be well spent if we sort it out.

We have not had lots of angry Londoners phoning in to complain about an increase of 54p a week, he said.

He is convinced Londoners wont mind paying more for services. What they object to, he says, is paying for services they are not getting.

Increase

He has increased the amount people will pay to the GLA this year by £27.90 or 54p a week for Band D.

All of that increase will go to the Metropolitan Police to pay for more than 1,000 new officers on the street.

He hopes to recruit 1,000 officers a year until the Met is back to a strength of 28,000, instead of todays 23,500.

It was in my election manifesto, he points out. And these officers arent going to work for nothing.

He recounts how, only a few days ago he ran into his old political arch-enemy Lady Thatcher.

She said to me people will be happy to pay it. You can never have enough police.

He says he has a promise from Met Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens that all the extra officers will go onto the streets of London boroughs.

For the first time ever, he says, he has employed a team of outside consultants to look at the Met and the way it spends its budget, to identify any inefficiencies and to make savings all of which will be used to employ more officers.

He also plans to increase civilian support for the police.

And he promised no more closures of local police stations with additional people to staff them.

Another major problem for Londoners is the lack of decent public transport.

Once the problem of how the Tube is to be financed is resolved, Mr Livingstone plans three new major Tube lines.

Tube fares are to be pegged to inflation only rises. He even hopes, eventually, to reduce Tube fares, harking back to the old GLC policy of Fares Fair.

Improvements

But those living in the outer London boroughs should see improvements too. He is currently talking to the Strategic Rail Authority about the new franchises for train routes into London.

He wants companies to be awarded the franchises only if they are willing to set up a metro-style system of a train every 10 minutes, just like the Tube.

Mr Livingstone admits bus services are abysmally bad in most of London.

He says the present contracts for bus companies offer no incentives to run a clean, safe, reliable service.

Over the next two years he is drawing up new contracts which he says will improve services and force out the cowboy companies.

Mr Livingstone says bus drivers have borne the brunt of changes designed to give companies a quick profit instead of long-term investment.

Bus drivers pay has fallen behind that of Tube drivers by £10,000 a year.

From April 1 all drivers will get

a bonus of £20 a week, to persuade the good ones to stay and to

attract more and bus fares will be frozen.

With more Routemaster buses on order, conductors will return to central London buses to speed up services and a network of cameras will be in place to police bus lanes. Mr Livingstone also plans to transform the night bus service into bus routes which run 24 hours.

Congestion charges for people driving into central London are another way the mayor hopes to ease traffic jams and find money for transport and road improvements.

A lot of the money will be passed onto the boroughs to spend. Preparatory work is underway

but nothing will materialise until 2003.

Mr Livingstone openly admits he is looking for at least a second term as mayor because many of his projects will take more than four years to complete.

In the short term, over the next year, he says Londoners will begin to see more bobbies on the beat, more police officers turning up to deal with crimes and small improvements in public transport and roads.

Spiral

To begin with, the improvements will not be dramatic, but they will create a gradual upward spiral.

The more people using public transport, the more money there will be to improve it. There will be more reliable buses moving more freely on the roads.

Eventually, he hopes the GLA will be such a success, that the Government will give it more powers and financial independence to run all the services for the capital city.

For the moment, he says I think I have got the right answers for London.

So wheres the money going?

In his new budget Mr Livingston promises the extra 54p a week will be spent on:

20 more police officers for Sutton,

18 for Kingston-Upon Thames,

32 for Wandsworth,

17 for Merton,

37 for Croydon

This years interim transport plans, formerly Government cash, to be spent on road improvements and repairs agreed with the GLA are

£1.004m for Sutton

£2.048 for Kingston

£1.385m for Merton

£2.262m for Croydon

£1.685m for Wandsworth

By.Linda Piper

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