Parking permits up 27%

The day after Tory Leader David Cameron lectured us about the evils of tax increases, Wandsworth Conservatives unveil a 27% increase in the cost of residents parking permits.

The price of a permit will now be £95 - a cost that has increased 44% since the council elections two years ago.

Curiously, the Conservatives mentioned nothing about their plans to hike up the cost of parking permits in their election manifesto for those elections - just as they forgot to tell us about their plans to close Wandsworth Museum or West Hill Library.

This is the reality of Wandsworth: Council Tax may be low but only because the Tories claw back the money through stealth taxes like this.

Inflation busting parking permit hikes are just one example; council tenants pay among the highest rents in London; pensioners needing home helps pay among the highest charges in London; charges for collecting bulky rubbish are among the highest in London; the amounts raised through library fines among the highest in London (and slammed by the Taxpayers' Alliance, no less); leisure centre charges among the highest in London; even the cost of dying - burial charges - are among the highest in London.

The irony of this 27% parking permit hike is that at the last council elections Labour in Wandsworth under my leadership pledged to make parking permits for the first car in every household free - which we'd have paid for by increasing the costs for second and subsequent parking permits in multi-car households. Of course, the Conservatives won those elections - so they'll say you get what you voted for.

It goes to show the real difference your vote makes locally.