With one council set to spend £50,000 having previously vetoed money for food banks
A new report by openDemocracy has revealed how much councils across the UK have planned to spend on coronation celebrations this weekend, despite facing over-stretched budgets and service cuts.
The amount spent by councils on the coronation comes in stark contrast to the financial struggles they have experienced amid energy price rises and inflation. With reports of local services facing severe cutbacks recently and battling to find an extra £2.4 billion last year to address increased costs.
One of the councils spending some of the most this weekend, with a planned £155,000 put towards the celebration, is Barking and Dagenham in east London, the fifth most deprived local authority in the UK.
Whilst Bromley Council is spending £50,000 on the coronation, which openDemocracy reported it would take from a community fund usually reserved for charity grants.
This comes after the Tory council leader Colin Smith previously vetoed proposals, based on cost, to give money to community groups to open warm banks for residents struggling to heat homes or for additional food bank funding.
Estimates have put the cost of the coronation at £50-100 million, with a recent YouGov poll revealing the majority (52%) of Londoners believed the coronation should not be paid for by taxpayers.
The data on how much councils are spending this weekend was obtained by openDemocracy through Freedom of Information requests to all local authorities in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
It revealed that councils were planning to spend an average of more than £13,000 on the celebrations, whilst 26 were set to spend more that £50,000 each.
A recent Savanta poll showed that support for the monarchy for all age groups below 45 has fallen to below 50%, whilst those over 64 years old support the monarchy by 57%.
The campaign organisation Republic, who plan to protest at the coronation tomorrow, has said they remain “undeterred” by a letter received from the Home Office setting our new policing powers.
(Photo credit: Flickr / Creative Commons)
Hannah Davenport is trade union reporter at Left Foot Forward
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