Hammersmith and Fulham council has been hit by the rebalancing of council funding (Alamy)
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A Labour-run London borough has ruled out joining the Conservatives in challenging the government over council funding cuts after receiving legal advice.
Tory-run Wandsworth Council, alongside Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet, recently launched a formal appeal against cuts to local government funding.
Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, also controlled by the Conservatives, later launched their own appeals.
It came after PoliticsHome revealed Wandsworth was set to announce a record-breaking council tax rise in 2027 to plug the gap left by a fall in grant funding from the government.
The Labour government argues that the changes are needed to rebalance funding towards parts of the country with higher deprivation so that it is “truly based on need”. As a result, many local authorities in the capital are set to see their grant funding decrease.
Labour-run Hammersmith and Fulham had been considering launching its own appeal.
However, its leader Stephen Cowan has now confirmed that the council has decided against it having received legal advice that a formal challenge is unlikely to be successful.
Speaking to PoliticsHome at Labour Party conference in Liverpool, he said: “We’ve hired a world-class KC, and we’ve gone through every single legal option, and the advice we’ve had is that there is no legal option that’s likely to play out as a win…
“I’m not interested in anything other than a win.”
The council leader added: “We’ve been given some very low likelihood of winning any legal action, so we’re not going to pursue that route.”
Cowan said the West London council would work through spending cuts before considering an increase in council tax, but refused to rule out a significant rise in the coming months.
The borough, like Wandsworth, has been granted special permission by the government to raise council tax by more than 5 per cent without a public referendum.
Asked by PoliticsHome whether Hammersmith and Fulham will follow Wandsworth with a major tax rise next year, Cowan acknowledged that raising council tax “is one of the options”.
“We’re just crunching numbers at the moment,” he said.
“The first port of call is to see what waste we can slash and what other stuff we can do. When I get back, I’ll be…crossing off all sorts of things that are going to make the savings, and we’ll see what we have to do after that.”
The council leader said he was sympathetic with the economic situation facing the Labour government but doesn’t believe reforms to local government funding are the right move.
“I simply don’t think the solution is fair funding,” he said.
“It doesn’t raise that much money, and you’re taking a lot of money of some councils to give a little bit to others. So I don’t think that’s the solution in the end.”
