Do you know how the Lib Dems have been spending your money?

Since the Lib Dems came to power in 2002 they have let spending on temps and consultants run out of control. In the last four years alone they have flushed millions of pounds down the drain on waste, instead of spending on improving services.

They won't even tell us how much they've shelled-out in bonuses for council bosses. We wouldn’t give bonuses to council bosses who’ve done a bad job and we’d publish and justify any bonuses we did give out.

Labour has a plan to cut down spending on temps and consultants by pooling them into centralised budgets and choking off wasteful spending. That doesn’t mean simply sacking the council’s temporary staff, many of whom currently do essential jobs like street cleaning. It means getting those essential staff on permanent contracts and cutting out the employment agency middleman.

It means using our existing in-house experts instead of constantly going out and paying a consultant hundreds of pounds a day to the same job but without any local knowledge.

The Lib Dems failure to collect tax costs you up to £80 a year

You are being asked by the Lib Dems to pay as much as £80 more than you would if they actually bothered to collect tax properly.

Your Lib Dem council is the third worst council at collecting tax in the country. They fail to collect up to £7 million a year and have to make up the shortfall by charging you more or cutting services. Nearly 1 in 10 people in Southwark don’t pay council tax before the end of the year.

We don’t think that it’s fair that the honest majority are penalised in this way for the Lib Dems failure to:

·        Sort out the council’s pathetic billing service, which can mean that people have to chase the council to pay what they owe or aren’t asked to pay at all

·        Crack down on those dishonest residents who get away with dodging their taxes

Labour has a four year plan to bring Southwark Council’s council tax collection up to the national average, by improving billing and cracking down on tax dodgers. That means that Southwark residents would be able to check our progress and hold us to account, but the Lib Dems aren’t interested in signing up to our plan.