Hornchurch & Upminster MP, Julia Lopez, has met Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, in parliament in the latest of a series of government meetings she has led on Havering’s budget.

Mrs Lopez has been exploring ways to put the borough on a better long-term financial footing after securing extra cash from Mr Gove’s department earlier in the year, further to discussions with Council Leader, Ray Morgon, and senior officers.

Talks with Mr Gove included ways to rapidly increase Havering's business rates income by using the tax incentives available from the Thames Estuary Freeport, recently introduced by the government to boost the region's economy.

To tackle pressures on councils from social care, the Government announced earlier this year £600m worth of additional funding for local authorities, £500m of which was allocated to social care to add to the £64bn package of funding already announced for councils across the country.

Locally, this means that Havering Council will receive £18.8m from the Social Care Grant, an increase of 32% compared to last year, and a wider uplift of £15.8m (7.1%) in its core spending power.

However, there remain long-term challenges to Havering’s budget because of the borough’s large elderly population and a sharp increase in the number of children with social care needs. The Local Government Funding Formula has not kept pace with those changes, and Mrs Lopez spoke to Mr Gove about her long-running campaign with the borough’s Town Hall politicians to get that formula updated. Mrs Lopez and Mr Gove also discussed the ‘Inadequate’ rating of the borough’s children’s services and the terms of a government loan being made to Havering.

Mrs Lopez put to Mr Gove the Council’s request to include a potential data centre in the boundaries of the Thames Estuary's new freeport zone. This would allow Havering to keep millions of pounds of extra business rates, putting the local council on a sustainable financial footing in the years ahead.

Mrs Lopez said:

My talks with Havering Council and the Communities Secretary have been productive so far. We have got more cash for the borough while other developments, like the extra funds secured from HS2 for potholes and new flexibility to build children’s homes, will also help.

I want to get the funding formula issue fixed and get any new data centre, if approved, in the freeport zone so that Havering can collect business rates that can be ploughed into better services for residents.

That is ultimately what this is all about - getting what residents need - as complex as these talks are. The government has given councils a lot of freedom in recent years to become more self-sustaining, particularly via business rates, and I want to see Havering explore more ways to attract firms into the borough while together we tackle some of the rapidly-changing needs of a growing population.