I was interested to see Councillor Bill Stephenson, the leader of Harrow Council, recently describe Let’s Talk, Labour’s £13,000 consultation exercise, as a forum for “mature debate” about “important issues”.

At December’s cabinet meeting, I asked Cllr Stephenson why the written survey part of Let’s Talk didn’t include council tax in a list of “priorities” that people were asked to rate in terms of importance. “Wage levels” — which the council cannot change beyond those of its own employees — was listed as a potential priority, however.

Cllr Stephenson insisted this wasn’t necessary, due to most councils signing up to receive extra funding from the Government — allowing them to freeze council tax for this year. For a councillor who constantly complained that our administration was obsessed with “silo thinking”, this is a quite a statement to make.

While we naturally welcome Labour following our example in freezing council tax, why has Cllr Stephenson not used Let’s Talk to give people a proper conduit for their views on council tax — one of the few universal issues for Harrow residents?

If Let’s Talk was really about letting residents shape the future of the council and its corporate priorities, why not ask them to be very specific about how much council tax they’d like to pay — also giving them the service implications of their choices? When they did this recently in Richmond, residents opted for a four per cent cut rather than just a freeze.

Of course Cllr Stephenson might just be haunted by the memories of what happened in 2003, when Labour spent £22,000 consulting residents on various increases and then completely ignored the response. Time will tell if the responses from Let’s Talk will suffer the same fate, but with its results not yet known, and the council’s budget imminent, one wonders how much of a difference they can now make?

Councillor Anthony Seymour
Headstone North Ward