Greenwich Council has agreed to spend up to £83,000 on political assistants despite being at ‘considerable risk’ of going bust.

The authority greenlit the proposal after being warned by its auditors that significant weaknesses were present in its financial stability.

The move will see two new members of staff being employed by the council, with one assisting the Labour Group, which consists of 51 councillors, on a full-time contract.

The other would be allocated to the Conservative Group, which is composed of three councillors in Greenwich, on a part-time basis.

Council documents said the cost of the two assistants could amount to over £83,000 and that the budget for such posts would need to be made by compensatory savings.

Conservative Councillor Matt Hartley noted that the budget for the current financial year had been set without the proposal for assistants in mind.

The opposition leader claimed the proposal presented an added financial pressure to the authority. He put forward an amendment, which was ultimately refused, to defer the decision on the new roles until a complete budget breakdown could be provided.

Cllr Hartley said: “If the leader of the council thinks he needs help with political advice, political research, group cohesion, political comms, why doesn’t he just draw on the skills, experience and talents of his 50 Labour colleagues who are already funded and paid for through the allowances scheme?”

The estimated £83,000 spend comes alongside an audit report from Grant Thornton, which Cllr Hartley described as being ‘damning’. The report found significant weaknesses in the authority’s arrangements for financial sustainability during the 2022/23 financial year. The authority claimed earlier this year that it was facing a budget gap of £54m by 2028, with stressors cited as being inflation, the cost of living crisis and workforce pressures.

The report claimed that the council would not be able to sustainably rely on its reserves beyond 2026 without committing to further savings, putting the authority in ‘considerable risk’ of entering a deficit. Greenwich Council addressed its financial position earlier this year by agreeing to £33.7m worth of cuts across the current financial year.

This consisted of 118 proposals including reducing the number and opening hours of leisure centres and libraries across the borough, as well as reducing the frequency of street sweeping from weekly to as little as once a month. The auditors said at the meeting on July 24 that they were satisfied the council was taking its recommendations to implement cost saving measures seriously.

The decision to appoint the political assistants came after the 2023 Local Government Association review of Greenwich Council recommended the authority needed to ‘urgently’ address working arrangements among elected members and officers. Council documents also claimed neither political group had an obligation to appoint a political assistant.

Labour Councillor Anthony Okereke, leader of Greenwich Council, said at the meeting that the audit report had claimed the authority had a history of being relatively devolved and lacked strong corporate organisation. The leader said he was working to change the management cultures at the authority to make the savings identified earlier in the year easier to deliver.

Labour Councillor Averil Lekau, deputy leader of the council, said at the meeting: “A lot of our councillors have got their own full-time jobs but they are dealing with very complex and increasingly complex issues. The need for a political assistant, in my view, is not a nicety but becoming more and more a necessity.”