Sadiq Khan gets green light to increase council tax and business rates to tackle violent crime

The London Assembly has backed Sadiq Khan's budget which includes plans to give an extra £234m to policing and tackling violent crime through council tax and business rate hikes.

Around £95m has already been announced for the Metropolitan police, which has to make £263m worth of cuts by 2022-23.

The £95m announced last December will be funded mostly from an 11 per cent increase to the mayor's council tax policing precept, the equivalent of 46p a week. The money will go towards new officers, gang violence investigators and the mayor's violence reduction unit that was set up last year with initial funding of £500,000.

Read more: Sadiq Khan proposes council tax hike to tackle violent crime

The mayor will also take an extra £118.6m from business rates that will go towards increasing police numbers over the next few years.

Overall, the total of the mayor's council tax precept will increase by 50p a week for the benchmark Band D taxpayer, who pays the average rate of council tax. Band A is the cheapest council tax rate while Band H is the most expensive.

All 32 London boroughs will be affected by the rate hike. A Band D taxpayer will see their bills increase from £294.23 to £320.51 each year. All of the additional income raised as a result of this increase will go to policing and the London fire brigade.

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Khan said: “This budget has been put together under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. These include the government’s failed austerity agenda, with huge cuts to the Met Police, TfL and other public services – and the threat of a no-deal Brexit.

“However – despite these challenges – this budget will quickly deliver tangible results to Londoners’ lives. In the face of crippling government cuts to the Met police and key preventative services, my budget invests record amounts to support policing and to tackle crime. It will also deliver record investment to tackle air pollution.”

Gareth Bacon, head of the GLA Conservatives, said: “It is no secret that we are facing a crime epidemic in the capital; the mayor has lost control of the streets and Londoners are feeling increasingly unsafe in their own city.

“When he’s asked about London’s soaring crime rates, Sadiq Khan will invariably blame the government and try to reassure Londoners that he is doing everything within his power to deal with these heinous crimes.

“But the mayor’s budget shows that he is taking Londoners for fools. Far from doing all he can, he is choosing to waste millions more on PR, City Hall bureaucrats and the transport unions at the expense of keeping Londoners safe.

“Our amendment to the mayor’s budget would have scrapped the waste and used the savings to put nearly 1,400 additional police officers on the streets. The fact that the mayor ignored our plans shows that he is completely out of touch with the needs of Londoners. Make no mistake, the mayor has chosen to prioritise press officers over police officers."