How we spend your money

Message from Councillor Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council

Your council is committed to supporting everyone that lives and works in Brent.

In Brent, we face a constant balancing act between the many challenges we face. The council’s income is received through various sources including council tax, business rates, fees and charges, and Government grants.

Like many local authorities, the council has faced increasing financial pressures for more than a decade due to central Government funding cuts and rising demand for services.

The council has successfully balanced our budget over the years – saving around £200million.

However, as you will have noticed with your own personal finances, rapidly rising inflation means the pound in your pocket is not buying as much. The council is also affected by sky high inflation, which is driving up the cost of goods, services, supplies and running buildings too, putting the council’s budget under more pressure than ever.

Finding more savings is incredibly difficult. Despite the challenges, your council will always be committed to supporting everyone that lives and works in Brent.
We will continue to prioritise the most vulnerable in our community and protect the essential services people depend on as much as possible.

To do this, along with most local authorities across the country, we have made the difficult decision to increase Council Tax by 4.99%. Along with the Mayor of London’s increase, your bill will rise by 6%.

This is not a decision the council has taken lightly, especially as we know how stretched people’s budgets are. That is why we are reinforcing the safety net for those most in need. If you are struggling with your bills or paying for essentials, and meet the eligibility criteria, you can get help through our Council Tax Support Scheme and Resident Support Fund.

Find out more on our Cost of Living support pages

Brent Council exists to serve you, our residents, and we will work tirelessly to build a better Brent with a brighter future.

Children and adults

We will spend £116.7m caring for 6,000+ elderly and vulnerable residents. £70m on early help to give all children the best start in life. £44m to create 427 new school places for children with special educational needs. £379m on Brent’s 98% good and outstanding schools and settings.

Environment and neighbourhoods

We will spend £6.4m on looking after and improving 844 miles of road and pavement. £700k on filling 10,000+ potholes. £2.2m on maintaining Brent’s 110 award-winning parks and open spaces. £19.5m on collecting household rubbish and recycling from 127,974 homes and sweeping our streets.

Housing

We will spend £140m to build new council homes, towards our 1,700 target by 2028. £34m on repairs for existing council homes. £5.8m on improving standards for those who rent privately.

Health and wellbeing

We will spend £23.4m on initiatives to protect the borough's health. £3.6m to help residents look after their wellbeing in our leisure centres.

Resident Support

We will spend £3m more to help residents cope with rising costs. £2m to tackle food poverty and support residents across our seven community hubs. We will provide free and fun activities for 4,800+ children and young people during the school holidays. We will spend £32m on Council Tax relief for 27,000+ households.

Employment and skills

We will spend £500k to help people find work through Brent Works. £2.8m on Brent Start to boost residents' skills. We will build on the success of last year’s record-breaking Jobs Fair in Wembley that attracted 6,000+ visitors and encourage more businesses to adopt the Good Work Standard.

Communities and culture

We will spend £3m on Brent’s Library service, welcoming 800,000+ visits per year. £300k on cultural activities to build on the Brent Borough of Culture 2020 legacy. £1.1m on local community projects to improve neighbourhoods.

Your average Council Tax for 2023/24 is £37.01 per week (based on a Band D property).

This is how each £1 will be spent on services residents rely on:

• 33p Adult social care
• 25p Children’s social care and early help
• 8p Waste, recycling and the environment
• 3p Housing and neighbourhoods
• 4p Customer services
• 2p Communities and tackling poverty
• 2p Culture, leisure and parks
• 23p The Metropolitan Police, London Fire Brigade and other Mayor of London Services.

The Mayor of London’s budget for the 2023-24 financial year sets out his priorities to support London’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and to tackle the huge social, health and economic inequalities which it has exposed and exacerbated – inequalities which have become even more apparent as a result of the current cost of living crisis. It supports job creation and London’s business community, our city’s future growth and economic success and the Mayor’s vision to rebuild London as a greener, cleaner and safer city with stronger and more cohesive communities.

This year’s budget will provide resources to improve the key public services Londoners need. This includes delivering more genuinely affordable homes, funding to maintain the capital’s transport services and tackling toxic air pollution and the climate emergency. The budget also provides resources to support jobs and growth, fund skills and retraining programmes, help rough sleepers, invest in services for children and young people and make London a fairer and cleaner place for everyone to live.

Moreover, it prioritises resources for the Metropolitan Police and London Fire Brigade to keep Londoners safe, including violence reduction initiatives, support for victims of crime, recruitment drives for additional frontline officers and projects to divert vulnerable young people away from the criminal justice system. The Mayor is also responding to the cost of living crisis by providing £130 million of new funding to ensure all primary school pupils can receive free school meals in the 2023-24 school year.

In light of the significant reductions in fares revenue since the pandemic, it has been necessary to provide additional resources through local taxation income to maintain London’s transport system including investing in preserving the bus network. However, this budget remains focused on delivering a swift and sustainable economic recovery across the capital as well as building the better, brighter, fairer future all Londoners want and deserve.

Council Tax for GLA services

The GLA’s share of the council tax for a typical Band D property has been increased by £38.55 (or 74p per week) to £434.14. The additional income raised will fund the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade and will also go towards ensuring existing public transport services in London can be maintained, meeting requirements set by the government in funding arrangements. 

Investing in frontline services

This budget will enable the Mayor to fulfil his key priorities for London. These include:

• Ensuring the Metropolitan Police has the resources it needs to tackle violent crime – since 2019 the Mayor has funded 1,300 additional police officer posts from locally raised council tax and business rates revenues – while seeking to increase trust and confidence amongst Londoners in the police service. His precept increase for 2023-24 will also be used to fund the recruitment of an additional 500 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).
• Tackling the underlying causes of crime through the rollout of funding to support disadvantaged young Londoners to access positive opportunities and constructive activities that allow them to make the most of their potential, as well as resources for new violence reduction initiatives.
• Protecting vulnerable children and women at risk of abuse and domestic violence.
• Providing enough resources to the London Fire Brigade (LFB) to ensure that first and second fire engines arrive at emergency incidents within 10 minutes on at least 90 per cent of occasions and 12 minutes on at least 95 per cent of occasions respectively, after being dispatched. The Mayor is also providing resources to rollout a transformation programme so that the LFB can implement the recommendations of the Grenfell fire inquiry. The London Fire Commissioner, with the full support of the Mayor, is also committed to implementing the deep-rooted reform needed to the culture and systems within the LFB.
• Working with London boroughs to maintain existing concessionary travel and assisted door to door transport schemes. This includes, for example, maintaining free bus and tram travel for under 18s as well as free off-peak travel across the network for older Londoners, the disabled, armed forces personnel in uniform and eligible armed services veterans and protecting the Taxicard and Dial a Ride schemes.
• Continuing the Hopper bus fare, which makes transport more affordable for millions of Londoners.
• Completing the final stages to deliver the full operation of and timetable for the Elizabeth line by no later than May 2023. The line has increased central London’s rail capacity by ten per cent and saw over 100 million passenger journeys during its first eight months. This follows on from the opening of Northern line extension to Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station in September 2021.
• Continuing to tackle London’s housing crisis, by investing £6.9 billion to allow 116,000 affordable home starts within London by the end of 2023 year and an additional 165,000 affordable homes starts by 2026, as well as allocating resources to tackle homelessness and reduce rough sleeping.
• Tackling the climate emergency including creating a new £134 million Environmental Improvement fund to help deliver the Mayor’s target for London to be carbon net zero by 2030. The Mayor is also expanding the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) London-wide to tackle air pollution, supported by a £110 million vehicle scrappage scheme for small businesses and Londoners in receipt of low income and disability benefits to help them switch to cleaner vehicles or retrofit their existing ones.
• Investing in projects to enable more walking and cycling across London.
• Funding projects to bring Londoners together, promote arts, sports and culture, help tackle inequality and improve the environment.

Summary of GLA budget

The GLA’s planned gross expenditure is higher this year. This reflects the additional resources the Mayor is investing in policing, the fire brigade and transport services. Overall the council tax requirement has increased because of the extra resources for the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade and to secure funding to maintain existing transport services including buses and the tube network. There has been a 1.6 per cent increase in London’s residential property taxbase.

Find out more about the GLA budget.

Each year, Brent Council sets Council Tax to help pay for important local services including education, libraries, rubbish and recycling, roads and social care.

The bill also includes a separate portion set by the Mayor of London which pays for the Metropolitan Police, London Fire Brigade and other Mayor of London services.

Calculating Council Tax

This year, Brent Council is increasing Council Tax by 4.99%. This includes 2% which goes towards the cost of caring for vulnerable adults in the borough. The Mayor of London is also increasing his portion by 9.7%. Overall, your total bill will increase by 6%.

You can see what band your property is in and the amount of Council Tax you need to pay in My Account.

What are the valuation bands?

The bands and charges for 2023-24 are shown below:

How much Council Tax will you pay?

Changes in spending

Changes in spending are summarised in the table below:

You can contact the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) if you have any enquiries about your Council Tax band or Business Rates valuation.