Leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich Cllr Danny Thorpe and Cllr Linda Perks Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources:
"The Royal Borough of Greenwich will have to make some extremely tough decisions as we try to balance our annual budget. Yet again the Government is only awarding a one year settlement for 2022/23 - instead of a three or four year scheme, which would allow us to plan properly for the future.
"On top of this, what we have been allocated is based on Government assumptions that we will increase council tax to the maximum and pass the rising costs of adult social care on to our residents - because they still haven't sorted the system out. That’s not fair on any of us.
"The Council most definitely does not want to be in this position, but after 11 years of relentless Government cuts, increasing demand for our services, rising inflation, and the prospect of ‘levelling up’ which could see London boroughs like ours losing even more funding, our options are very limited.
"The pandemic has shown how vital council services are to our communities, and we want to ensure we maintain and strengthen these as much as we can.
"At the same time, the cost-of-living crisis is very real. As a council, we have seen a staggering increase in residents seeking support to meet basic needs, with the lowest income families affected the most. We have given more than 17,000 meals out to hungry children during the school holidays, and the local food bank has distributed more than 64,000kg of food since April 2021.
"We want to be able to maintain these schemes and introduce new ones to continue supporting our harder hit households as inflation continues to rise, but it will be difficult to do this and maintain services without some increase in Council Tax.
"Before we take our decision, we'd like to hear your views on how we should set the budget for the coming year."
The consultation is open until Sunday, February 6 2022.