Kaya Comer-Schwartz and Diarmaid Ward

HARD-PRESSED families are in line for more pain after the council approved rent rises amounting to around £40 a month alongside a 5 per cent council tax hike.

The Labour-run council set the increases for the coming year at a budget meeting on Thursday, with councillors blaming it on impossible choices fuelled by reduced help from central government. A slashed grant has seen a cut of nearly £11million from Islington’s spending.

Council leader Labour councillor Kaya Comer-Schwartz said the budget was being passed with “regret”, adding: “I can honestly say it has never been tougher. After 14 years of efficiencies and savings, there is just not much more meat on the bone and this is seriously affecting our front line services that residents rely on.

“We continue to protect those vital services because we know the devastating impact cutting would have on local people. We all live here in Islington and we’re all part of this community. And we all feel the daily effects of the Tory austerity and what that’s doing to the fabric of our society.”

Her own party’s national leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves have yet to say what money will be available for local government if Labour come to power this year, and Ms Reeves was using a familiar Tory line this week that there is “no magic money tree”.

Cllr Comer-Schwartz said local authorities around the country were seriously struggling due to “crippling” social care budgets, which have increased by £20million year on year in Islington. Some £2.2million being raised from the council rise will be put towards adult social care.

Other demands on increased spending include paying for special education needs and disability (SEND), they said.

An exemption scheme, where the borough’s poorest 8,000 don’t pay council tax at all, will continue.

Other savings will be found in back office administration and a voluntary redundancy scheme. There will be new charging for green garden waste.

“The total failure to create a national care service and broken promises to sort out social care, are another sign of Tory failure to govern,” the leader added.

Councillor Diarmaid Ward, Islington’s finance chief, said: “We want to create a more equal Islington, and this year’s budget proposals do everything we can to protect vital services which residents need.

“But this is getting harder and harder in a time when the overall impact of years of government cuts to our funding, inflation, and spiralling demand for services are creating a perfect storm.”

But the leader of the opposition, Green councillor Benali Hamdache, said Labour could have gone further to alleviate child poverty in the borough.

He said: “I’m so disappointed that our council tax reduction scheme follows the government’s lead. The council has the power to do something different, but we’re not. The £40 allowance for each child stops after the second child. We can and should be doing everything we can to compensate for national policy that attacks these families.

“We’re calling on you to go further, to go harder, to be more ambitious. There is no reason why, with the political balance we have in this council, we shouldn’t be leading from the front on every single thing.”

He described seeing an elderly man fall over at a bus stop, crack his head open, and then be told an ambulance wait would be 40 minutes.

He said: “It’s not hyperbole to say austerity kills. It’s self-evident. [George] Osborne, [David] Cam­eron and their Lib Dem allies balance their recession on the shoulders of those who can pay the least. If you’re sick, if you are poor, if you are vulnerable, the party in power trim the services you rely on while asking little of those who can contribute more.

“Fourteen years later, and that ideology affects every decision we make as a council. From having to close primary schools to closing Sobell Ice Rink. I don’t believe anyone in this room got into politics to make these decisions”.