Lewisham council approves budget savings of £34m
The council has approved a fresh package of savings worth more than £34million as it looks to close a £30m budget gap by 2026/27.
During a meeting on 9 July, Lewisham council’s cabinet approved a report outlining the savings, which are made up of £29.25m in general fund savings and an additional £4.784m in Housing Revenue Account (HRA) savings.
According to a Cabinet report, the council needs to find £30m in savings after it used up £21.89m in reserves to help balance the 2025/26 general fund budget which was passed earlier this year. Council officers have since identified £6.67m in savings for 2025/26 and £22.58m in savings for 2026/27.
Children and Young People, followed by Adult Social Care and Health are set to see the biggest changes with £7.9m and £6.7m worth of savings proposed over the next two years.
The mayor of Lewisham, Brenda Dacres, said council officers have been reviewing options to find further savings to reduce the council’s reliance on its reserves and get ahead of the savings it needs to make by next year. Ms Dacres told Cabinet: “In some of the proposals, there are frontline services that will be affected, but where they are we will carry out further consultations with people who use those services.
“I want to reassure residents that I and this Cabinet remain committed to keeping you updated on our financial position, these are difficult decisions and we are not taking them lightly, but they are necessary.”
Savings include recruiting permanent staff instead of agency staff within Adult Social Care and Health (£815,000), and increasing the weekly charge to use Linkline by 84p. Linkline is a telecare service that provides 24/7 call handling and response for vulnerable residents (£250,000).
Other savings include increasing fees for the council’s funeral services, including cemeteries and crematoria by 10% (£238,888) and moving to a new parking contract which is reportedly £1m less than the previous contract.
Council officers have also earmarked temporary accommodation savings worth an ambitious £2.49m by 2026/27, which the council hopes to achieve by implementing a “dynamic purchasing system” for securing temporary accommodation which will no longer focus on “spot purchasing” or negotiating with accommodation providers individually.
Ms Dacres went on to say: “If we are able to continue to deliver and support our most vulnerable residents while protecting the essential everyday services we all depend on, and that includes from bin collections, street cleaning, maintaining our award-winning parks, our award-winning libraries, our youth services we’ve just brought back in-house and those that are running independently.
“We will keep working hard, we have done so much over the past few years but it’s important for us to be prudent when it comes to our budget and make sure that we are replenishing our reserves so we don’t find ourselves in the dire situation that other authorities have found themselves in.”
Cabinet members proceeded to agree on the recommendations in the report, and approved the savings identified.
