RUNNING LONDON

Evening Star, Issue 22973, 2 June 1938, Page 13

RUNNING LONDON

WHAT IT COSTS Housing and slum clearance operations, to which the London County Council is specifically or indirectly committed, are estimated to involve a future capital expenditure of £50,000,000 according to the annual estimates of the L.C.C. Finance Committee, issued recently. Capital expenditure of all kinds to which the council is committed, as at March 31, the end of the financial year 1937-38, amounts to £60,053,400. This is a decrease of £6,372,460 compared with last year. , . , The Finance Committee explains that the decrease arises on housing, and is mainly duo to revision of the assumed cost of completing existing programmes for slum clearance and the abatement of overcrowding and the progress made in the current year. The maintenance expenditure on all services of the council for the coming year totals £41.819,975, of which £12,079,400 will be allocated for education, £6,114,815 for hospitals and medical services, £2,567,384 for housing and public health, and £3,040,160 for public assistance.

Income is estimated to total £17,246,010. Exchequer grants are expected to amount to £7,662,742, receipts in aid of expenditure and balances ■ are expected to total £3,801,829, leaving £23,786,500 to be collected from the country rates. The committee recommends that this amount can be_ raised by increasing the rate by sixpence ■ -—from 7s 3Jd to 7s 9£d. Of the total of 7s 9id, 2s 6.9 d in the ', £is required for education and Is 10.7 d • for public assistance, • Sir Harold Webbe, leader of the 1 Municipal Reform Party in the L.C.C., in an interview regarding the proposed increase of sixpence in the rates, said i that Mr Latham, the Labmir chairi man of the Finance Committee, had • laid great emphasis on the cost of the i new education programme, slum clearance, and air raid precautions. “ London ratepayers should realise, ; however,” said Sir Harold, “ that these ; items by no means account for a sixpenny increase in the rate. All these i developments, and the new midwives’ service as well, only cost an extra two- : penny rate. “ Mr Latham did not explain that • the rateable value of London has gone 1 up by over £1,000,000, which gives the L.C.C. an extra yield in rates equiva- ' lent to a l£d increase. The ratepayers of. London will want to know what is to bo done with the unexplained 5Jd i increase, which means another £l,400,000 out of their pockets.’t