Camden Budget Cuts – Conservatives propose advertising on property owned by Town Hall in order to avoid cuts

Published: 3rd March, 2011
by RICHARD OSLEY

THE two largest opposition parties insist council services facing the axe could have been saved with the Conservatives arguing that rescue cash could have been raised by hawking advertising space at council-owned buildings.

Finance spokesman Don Williams said street furniture and council centres could provide a brand new – and lucrative – source of revenue.

“Look at libraries. You could have the computer room at Swiss Cottage. It could be sponsored by IBM,” he said.

Councillor Williams said lampposts could also be used for advertising.

He added: “There are good locations around Camden Lock and in the south of the borough which companies would be interested in.”

Lib Dem councillor Flick Rea said the idea would lead to “Tesco Talacre” and “Burger King Swimming Baths”.

Undeterred, Cllr Williams was pushed centre stage for the Tories on the budget debate. He said advertising revenue could be brought in using the council magazine Your Camden, “if the council had someone who knew what they were doing”. Strap advertising on the council’s recently redeveloped website could haul in even more money, he said.

He added that existing services could be used to raise money by taking a more commercial edge.

“There is the local studies archive in Holborn Library. People love looking at that material. Why not get it online and run it in a way like www.ancestory.co.uk has been. People subscribe to look up their family history.”

Cllr Williams called for paid union posts to be dropped and said Camden should outsource more of its services. He said sharing services with other London authorities would save money and lead to less need for office space, which could then be used to generate more money.

“It is simply not true that Camden had to close all of the services that are under threat – and we’ve shown  how,” he said. “Labour has not taken responsibility for the political choices it has made.”

Liberal Democrats, the largest opposition party with 13 seats, voted against the Tory budget amendments. Their own suggestions, by contrast, did garner the support of Conservative votes.

Leader Councillor Keith Moffitt announced ideas to give threatened services “breathing space”, calling for cuts to be deferred to the Mornington Sports Centre in Camden Town, Caversham children’s centre in Kentish Town and three old people’s centres to see if rescue packages could be found over the next 12 months.

He told the meeting that the lack of money in local government was largely a problem “inherited from Labour’s last government”.

Lib Dems said they would find money by cutting back Camden’s communications department and team of press officers, reducing the number of cabinet councillors to eight and cutting senior officer pay. They also wanted to raise parking charges for large gas-guzzling cars.

Cllr Moffitt said his party’s ideas to make libraries “community hubs” rather than closing them down had been ignored. 

He too said Camden needed to do more to share services with other boroughs. A plan to share a chief executive with neighbouring Islington was spiked earlier this year. “Apart from that the only shared services arrangement that Labour can point to is one catering contract – that’s not good enough,” he said.

Labour councillors said the amendments, both voted down, were “fantasy budgets” compiled without appreciating the scale of cuts demanded by the government.

Finance chief Councillor Theo Blackwell said: “I look down the suggestions here and see the words: outsource, privatise, reconfiguration, restructure, reconfiguration, outsource, reconfigure.” 

His colleague Cllr Thomas Neumark said the opposition was “acting macho” against the council’s own staff.

Solitary Green councillor Maya De Souza called for a voluntary levy from high-earning residents, an increase in revenue from parking permits and a reduction in council staff working hours as ways of finding money to save threatened services.

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