The threat of more austerity is chilling for councils in the Covid crisis

It has already become somewhat of a cliché to talk about not going back to the pre-coronavirus world when this crisis is eventually over, and to harness what positive changes we can in order to address the inequalities that existed in our society before. Not least to address the causes and unequal impact of the climate crisis. Of course, as Labour activists, our default setting is to seek to change the world around us. Yet for councils dealing on the ground with the scale of challenge and re-thinking required by the crisis, we cannot wait for clarity from central government eventually to materialise after the warm, soapy headlines of a No 10 daily briefing. Nor can we wait for the slow machinery of Westminster to grind out some top-down solutions in a year’s – or even a few months’ – time.

As ever, where national politics fails, Labour councils are stepping up and delivering for our communities. Already in this crisis, councils have picked up the slack – keeping essential services going, delivering food parcels for vulnerable people, filling the personal protective equipment gap left by government incompetence, and supporting communities to get each other through these difficult times. In Lambeth, we’re proud to have been one of the first to set up our food distribution hub for vulnerable people, supplementing the meagre efforts of central government by delivering fresh food and care packages for over 8,000 people in just a couple of weeks. And delivered by cargo bike, too!

It’s been no different with our emergency transport response. We’ve responded to the dangers that result from using our neighbourhoods differently in order to follow government regulations and health advice. And, rightly, the question is being asked: how do we embed the positive changes, particularly fewer cars on our streets and better air quality? We cannot lurch from one health crisis back to another. But without bold intervention, we risk seeing a rush back to cars as workers stay away from public transport. And whilst in lockdown, we have seen increases in speeding at times by more than 50%.

Over 70% of our households in Lambeth live in flats and the majority don’t own a car. That means most of our residents have no outside space and are increasingly trying to enjoy the public space available in their local neighbourhood that, in normal times, is still too dominated by rat-running, congestion and speeding traffic. Last week, we were the first council in the country to launch a Covid-19 emergency transport plan. It includes temporarily widening our pavements at the worst pinch points to enable safe social distancing; and looking at interventions that can reduce road danger in our neighbourhoods as restrictions are eased and people need to access local town centres for employment and shopping.

Our plan is informed by, and builds on, our longstanding ambitions set out in our transport strategy last year, to create ‘healthy routes’ – safer routes for walking and cycling – and ‘low traffic neighbourhoods’ right across the borough. Through the strategy, and with the projects on which we had been working with TfL – such as the Brixton liveable neighbourhood – we are building a borough where everybody will feel able to walk and cycle safely. Since we began to implement our emergency transport response, we’ve learnt that the tube would need to be cut to just 12% use whilst government social distancing measures remain in place. So it is all the more important that we manage our transport network in Lambeth, and with TfL, in a safe, sustainable way. And in a way that will enable healthy choices to be made by our residents to walk and cycle.

We need a transport system that supports us reaching our carbon reduction targets to help tackle the climate crisis, whilst also supporting our local economy to enable a genuine green recovery. Of course, none of this has yet been supported by government, which has consistently failed to take meaningful action on climate change, to fund improvements to make neighbourhoods cleaner and greener – or even to support local councils trying to take these emergency measures during this crisis. In Lambeth, we’ve worked with residents and campaign groups who are sick of their roads not being safe, and sick of pollution marring their children’s walk to school. But whilst they have shown huge support for action we have taken, they rightly want us to go much further and to fund significant and long-lasting changes to our environment.

It’s our ambition to go further. But we estimate that the government’s U-turn on council funding could leave Lambeth over £25m out of pocket after funding our response to Covid-19. Already, we have seen Tory councils express concerns of bankruptcy and, as an inner-city council hammered by a decade of Tory and Lib Dem cuts, the threat of more austerity is a chilling one for local services that have barely hung on in there for years.

Our message could not be clearer: local services cannot be forced to pay the price for this crisis and to build a better future. We need properly funded local councils, empowered to take the kind of radical interventions our communities need. In Lambeth, we have the ambition, fantastic partners and the community support to do it and we’re already well on the journey. But we need genuine investment, not Tory cuts, to make it a reality.