Labour majority on Hounslow Council passes Budget for 2026-27

Council Leader Shantanu Rajawat introducing this year’s Budget as “a Budget that invests in people”

This year’s Budget represents a ‘turning point’ says Labour, in what they can afford to do and how they can plan for the future

Hounslow councillors voted on the Budget for the coming financial year at Tuesday night’s Borough Council meeting (3 March), passing it with a large majority. (Labour has 43 councillors to the Conservatives’ ten, Greens’ one and six Independent councillors).

Calling it ‘a Budget for the Future’, the Hounslow Labour Group has branded this a ‘turning point’ budget, due to some big investments they plan to make in public services – made possible, in part, because of the Labour Government’s Fair Funding review, which has recalibrated how money is paid out from central governmnet to local authorities, and from which Hounslow is a major beneficiary.

READ ALSO: The power of positive politics – guest blog by Chiswick Riverside councillor Amy Croft

The Fair Funding review reverses ‘years of Tory cuts’ and has allowed Hounslow’s administration to throw their weight behind some ambitious local investments:

• Doubling street cleaning activities, with streets now getting weekly cleans, including deep cleans for town centres
• Free passes and discounts for young people to access leisure
• £10.5 million invested into building a new green heat network
• £4 million to build a brand-new leisure centre
• Investment in the ‘Golden Mile’ and ‘Future Feltham’ regeneration projects
• £3 million invested in parks and green spaces
• £32 million to improve housing estates, rising to £150 million by 2030
• £125 million to build new council homes like the projects at Albany and Charlton in Brentford

READ ALSO: Council Tax goes up by the maximum as LB Hounslow publishes budget ‘that invests in the future of the borough’

Conservative Group at Tuesday’s Budget setting meeting

Conservatives’ “fanciful” Budget amendment

The Conservative opposition group put forward their own Budget proposals, which they introduced as an amendment, with plans to reduce staff and allowances and to sell the ‘Digital Dock’, a community workspace in Brentford:

READ ALSO: Conservative councillors present alternative budget for LB Hounslow

The Labour Group described the Conservatives’ proposals as ‘fanciful’ and based on information about the Council’s services that was just plain wrong:

‘The amendment included proposals to cut the “Community Solutions” team, a team that has not existed since October 2024, in the mistaken belief that their work was being duplicated by the Resident Experience Team. The Resident Experience Team does not currently perform any of the functions the Tories think are being duplicated.

‘The Conservative amendment also included plans for a £1 million Corporate Efficiency target (on top of the budget’s existing £2.9 million efficiency savings). While the savings in the Budget are broken down line by line, the Tory amendment provided no detail on how they were to achieve this target, without cutting frontline services’.

They also accused the Tories of wanting to ‘sell the family silver’:

‘Finally, the Conservatives proposals included selling off the ‘Digital Dock’ – a community workspace in Brentford, which their own amendment admitted was cost-neutral and would not provide a long-term saving. Council ownership means the Digital Dock is used by a number of community groups and partner organisations – something that could be put at risk if the space were to pass into private ownership’.

Conservatives’ “fag packet amendment fell apart on impact with reality” says Council Leader Shantanu Rajawat

Leader of the Council and the Labour Group Cllr Shantanu Rajawat commented:

“Have the Tories given up? Every year they get the chance to set out an alternative vision for this borough, and every year they come up short. Their fag-packet amendment fell apart on impact with reality.

Worse than that, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the work done by the council. They want to make a £375k cut to the ‘Community Solutions Team’ – a team which has not existed since 2024.

Just like Reform, they want to make a £1 million saving by laying off staff, without saying whose jobs they want to get rid of or how they will protect frontline services.

Nothing could be more Tory, however, than their proposal to sell off community assets like the cost-neutral Digital Dock to pay for the very redundancies they are proposing!

We spend 10 months working on setting a balanced budget every year. How long did the Tories spend on their wish list? 10 minutes?

At least they bothered submitting an amendment. It was disappointing to see Green Councillor Lambert opposing our plans to double street cleaning, and Councillor Dennison siding with the Tories over the Digital Dock sell-off.

I am proud to have presented such a positive, ambitious budget – a budget based on fairer choices for the lives of all our residents. I just wish the Opposition would do the same.”

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