The budget will be presented to full council later this month (Photo: Newsquest/Pixabay) Harrow Council looks set to make a council tax hike of almost five per cent as its cabinet approved the budget proposals for 2021/22. Senior councillors agreed to the suggestions put forward at a meeting yesterday (Thursday, February 11) following a review of the council’s finances. The proposals include a 4.99 per cent council tax increase, of which three per cent will be ringfenced for adult social care, and the management of a funding gap of around £8 million. This gap will be covered through some reserves, which Cllr Adam Swersky, who is responsible for finance at Harrow Council, explained had been “specifically set aside” as well as “a further tightening of expenditure”.
The council and emergency services have discussed the LTNs (Photo: Atish Anand/Pexels/Newsquest) The leader of Harrow Conservatives has called for low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in the borough to be removed “as a matter of urgency” after seeing a letter from the London Ambulance Service (LAS). Cllr Paul Osborn wrote to Harrow Council’s chief executive, Sean Harriss, asking him to “rectify the defects” in the LTN programme, which was implemented as part of plans to promote active travel and assist the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. He said they could cause serious problems for emergency services in terms of getting to those in need and suggested, if they are not addressed, this could lead to legal issues.
Low traffic neighbourhoods could become crime hot spots , police warn
Police have found roads closed with planters and bollards are allowing criminal to flee officers making them potential criminal hot spots
19 December 2020 • 7:00pm
Campaigners against low traffic neighbourhoods have held a series of demonstrations across the country
Credit: Heathcliff O Malley
Roads closed with planters and bollard as part of Grant Shapps’s “green transport revolution” risk creating crime “hot spots”, police have warned.
The Metropolitan Police Service has written to councils expressing “concerns” that street closures introduced to create low traffic neighbourhoods could slow 999 response times and even encourage criminals to favour those areas because they can more easily escape pursuing officers.
Greater London Assembly member Tony Devenish, who opposed a controversial cycle lane on Kensington High Street that lasted seven weeks and was removed last week, fears the new organisation will be “anti-car”.
“We’re not here to ram the motorcar off the road. We’re here to listen to the public through democratically accountable councils,” he told The Telegraph.
“I am concerned about a national quango. Grassroots democracy is the best way of supporting active travel, not ‘Whitehall-knows-best’.
“We need to stop the Mayor of London and parts of Government that want to push this agenda. It has to work from the bottom up, not the top down.”