Hendon Town Hall
In among the cherished time we spend with family and friends, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is usually a period for reflection and planning as we make resolutions and look to the new year with hope.
As I reflect on the past year, I’m reminded of all the people I’ve met across Barnet who serve their communities and who work together to make this borough the great place it is.
I’d like to thank them all, including our voluntary sector organisations, public sector partners and our emergency services who also work throughout the Christmas period to keep us safe.
Through my Leader Listens sessions, I’ve been privileged to spend time with those overcoming huge individual challenges like domestic abuse survivors, and those with disabilities facing day-to-day barriers.
I think about the domestic abuse survivor I met, who is now coming to speak to council staff to make sure that victims feel they can engage in the council’s services.
The deaf resident who spoke about finding council phone lines difficult for their communication and is helping to shape our services so that other deaf people find it easier to get in touch.
Hearing their stories and listening to their ideas about how the council, public services and the community can help has been an important part of these Leader Listens sessions and I’d like to thank every person who has participated for their contribution.
I’ve also learned from speaking to residents in other forums like our Youth Assembly and Barnet Question Time – all have helped inform us about your priorities for Barnet and how we can work together to achieve them.
With the ongoing budget challenges that local government and the public sector faces, we need to make sure we are regularly engaging with residents to understand what is most important to you, so we can re-shape services to focus on those things and deliver them even more cost-effectively.
As many of you may know, because of inflation and unprecedented increases in demand for council services, the council’s budget gap is £52m for next year.
These budget pressures are set to continue for some time and addressing them will mean being an ever-leaner organisation focused on delivering fewer priorities.
This will mean making difficult decisions over the coming months, and as a Barnet resident, I know that many people will find some changes difficult.
But working with you, we are taking long term decisions to make the council more financially sustainable.
1,000 new council homes that will reduce the temporary accommodation budget.
Bringing children’s care facilities in-house so we do not have to pay private companies huge profits.
Working with partners to promote independence in old age and keep the cost of social care down.
Working together, we are planting 1,000 trees a year, decarbonising the council fleet and buildings and delivering thousands of new Electric Vehicle Charge points, improving our air quality and our health – and keeping costs for health care and energy down.
Driving forward with a £97m highways improvement programme to fix our roads and pavements to keep the cost of maintaining them down.
Maintaining a council tax lower than any of our neighbouring boroughs – to help families keep their household bills down.
We do have serious challenges ahead of us, but I know in Barnet if we work together, we can tackle them together.
I look forward to working with you in 2025 to make Barnet even more brilliant.