Average council tax bills could go up by almost £19 a year to help pay for London’s police and fire services, the mayor has announced.
Sir Sadiq Khan’s draft budget is proposing a rise in his share of council tax to £490 for the average household at Band D – a rise of 4%.
The amount is not enough to cover the Metropolitan Police’s budget shortfall – in December last year its commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the force needed an additional £450m; a week later the government announced it would provide an extra £65m.
Sir Sadiq said: “The last thing I want to do is increase council tax at a time when many household budgets are stretched.
“But keeping Londoners safe is my top priority as mayor and I’ll always do everything I can to ensure the Met Police and the London Fire Brigade have the funding they need.”
The increase is expected to raise an additional £54m in the police budget for 2025-26, a City Hall spokesperson said.
Just under £5 would go towards funding the London Fire Brigade (LFB).
While the mayor’s increase applies across the city, each of London’s 32 borough councils have still to announce how much their share of council tax will be.
Last month, the government announced Scotland Yard would receive £208m through the National and International Capital City grant, an increase of £65m compared with the 2024-25 settlement.
Since 2016, the funding the Met receives from City Hall has doubled, taking it from 19% of the force’s total budget to 25%, a mayor’s spokesperson said.
Sir Sadiq said: “The Met is still facing a budget shortfall due to over a decade of damaging real-terms cuts by the previous government.
“That’s why I’m stepping in to provide an additional £54m, which will help to keep neighbourhood police officers on the streets and bear down on violent crime and robbery.”
Neil Garratt, leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly, said: “Labour’s disastrous Budget has put prices up, hit jobs, and cut public finances, so now the mayor is asking Londoners to foot the bill for failure.”
The mayor also announced that £147.5m of funding would be set aside in his draft budget to fund his pledge of universal free school meals across all of the capital’s state schools.
The final budget will be confirmed on 25 February following debates by the London Assembly.