Cllr Johar Khan

The Mayor, Boris Johnson has set out his priorities for his first budget which he will present to the Assembly for approval in early 2009.However a meeting of the London Assembly’s Budget committee last week revealed that there were some dangerous holes in the guidance that that the Mayor has issued to the GLA and its Functional Bodies (Transport for London, the London Development Agency and the Metropolitan Police) in preparing their draft budgets for the financial year 2009/10. Consultation on the budgets will begin in the late Autumn.

As Mike Tuffrey told the Budget Committee: “The     Met Police have budgeted for an increase of 2.5% in police spending next year, just to cope with inflation. At a time of rising fuel costs and wage increases, this was always going to be a tough sum to achieve.

Now the Mayor has told the Met Police that they should only budget to spend an extra 1.75% in the next financial year. This means real cuts in spending on London’s police service next year.

I am always in favour of looking at ways of making efficiency savings, but the Mayor has failed to say how he can balance the books without job cuts. 80% of the policing budget for London is made up of staff costs.

“Boris Johnson should guarantee now that there will be no real cuts next year in the policing service Londoners receive.

“The Mayor’s budget guidance documents are available for download at http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/budget/0910budget.jsp