Opposition Tories say years of high borrowing have left the council in “desperate” state but Labour leader claims they are “out of touch”, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Enfield Civic Centre with Labour Tim Leaver (inset left) and Conservative James Hockney (inset right)

Enfield Council has approved its budget for 2025/26 following a gruelling two-hour debate by councillors.

At Enfield Civic Centre last night (Thursday 27th), the Labour administration’s deputy leader and cabinet member for finance Tim Leaver presented the budget plans for the upcoming financial year, while council leader Ergin Erbil accused the opposition Tories of being “out of touch” and dropping to “new lows”.

It came as the Conservative group’s shadow member for finance James Hockney described the council’s recent successful application to the government for £30million-worth of ‘exceptional financial support’ (EFS) as “the last desperate step before bankruptcy”.

Enfield was one of 30 English local authorities to be awarded EFS this year, with £20m to manage its overspend for 2024/25 and a further £10m to help balance the 2025/26 budget – coming in the form of permission to spend cash from capital receipts on revenue spending, something usually prohibited.

As well as the EFS money, the council has set out £18m-worth of savings, agreed to raise council tax by the maximum 5% allowed, and also plans to take £5m from its reserves to balance the budget.

This all comes as the council faces £7m of pressure on adults and children’s social services, £17m of inflationary pressures, £2.7m of homelessness pressures, and a £4m housing benefit subsidy loss.

Highlighting the key pressures impacting Enfield, including a “broken housing market” and “rise in temporary accommodation”, Cllr Leaver said: “Residents know it’s tough and understand that we all need to do our bit – a whole council approach, a whole borough approach.”

However, Cllr Hockney described the budget as “taxes up and services down”. He said: “For years we have warned about this being the tenth most indebted authority and what do we hear back? ‘ We manage risk, we manage risk’.

“With a rising tide of debt interest payments and government settlements, the day we warned about, of bankruptcy, is fast approaching, and it’s only been averted by you seeking emergency support from the government.

“That is the last desperate step before bankruptcy and it’s exactly what we’ve been warning, we’ve warned about the decimation of council reserves and your own report says reserves are critically low.”

The council’s total debt is set to hit £1.5billion over the next year, up from £1.1bn in 2023. As of January 2024, all UK councils combined owed £97.8bn, equivalent to around £1,400 per person.

Labour councillors said years of government under-funding had put them, and other councils, in a difficult financial position and forced them to make cuts.

Conservative councillors also complained about the cuts to services, including street cleaning.

In previous years bin collections in Enfield have been reduced from weekly to fortnightly, while Labour pledged to install 200 fly-tipping cameras in 2022 but has yet to fully deliver on them.

The Tories also questioned housing delivery targets at Meridian Water, the council’s flagship regeneration project which is set to deliver 10,000 homes.

Susan Erbil, cabinet member for planning, argued the use of capital receipts via EFS would enable the council to invest in projects and give the council the capacity to manage its planning backlog.

Cllr Erbil said: “None of this would have been possible if the Conservatives won the election last year, they wanted to keep local government on its knees. The party opposite us has no plans for Enfield.”

Focusing on the council’s reserves position, debt, and the challenges to delivering both statutory and non-statutory services, Tory councillor Lee Chamberlain described the budget as a “spiral heading towards the drain”.

He said the yearly interest and debt repayments, which now come to over £31m, “could have gone into frontline services” if the debt hadn’t been accrued. “It’s a disaster budget,” Cllr Chamberlain added.

Following the debate, the budget was passed unamended by 30 votes to 21, along party lines.

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