THERE were dramatic scenes on Tuesday night as council leaders struck a controversial last-minute deal to save the budget from falling through.
The original spending proposals were narrowly voted down after members of the Independent Community Group, who form the ruling coalition with the Tories, refused to back them.
In an unprecedented move, party leaders were told to go away and thrash out a new deal in private before returning to the council chamber.
Faced with the prospect of coming back every night until an agreement could be reached, or even that of the chief executive setting an emergency interim budget, the coalition chiefs finally managed to find a satisfactory arrangement.
The Tories had already announced an extra £100,000 for the 'community pot' on the night, on top of £200,000 for voluntary groups previously proposed, as a sweetener for ICG members.
But ICG group leader Phil Andrews was able to squeeze a further £250,000 of 'community expenditure' from council leader Peter Thompson before the move was finally passed by 29 votes to 28.Had former Labour councillor Jiwan Virk, who was suspended from the party over an illegal home extension scandal, been present and voted against the budget, councillors would have been sent back to the drawing board for a second time.
The final deal is little different to that originally tabled by the Conservative group and means there will still be a council tax freeze largely funded by £8.2million of 'savings'.
Opposition leaders said they were concerned about where the additional £250,000 would come from and what exactly it would be used for. Labour group leader Jagdish Sharma said: "This was a shoddy deal done by two parties with no principles whatsoever. They couldn't tell us where the money would come from or what it was going to be spent on. It's a shocking waste of council tax payers' money."
However, council leader Peter Thompson defended the budget, which includes an extra £2.3m investment in children's services and £1m more for highways maintenance.
"By reducing bureaucracy and improving efficiency we've been able to make sure we don't add to the burden of hard-working residents in the difficult economic climate," he said.
Councillor Andrews welcomed the extra community investment, saying 'we want to put local people at the heart of what we're doing'.
Earlier in the night a Lib Dem amendment calling for a loan of more than £8m towards the regeneration of Gunnersbury Park, among other proposals, was rejected after opposition leaders pointed out it would cost the average council tax payer up to £7 a year.
Proposals drawn up by the West Area Independents, in conjunction with independent councillor John Connelly, to fund the annual £217,000 cost of producing council magazine Hounslow Matters entirely through advertising were also thrown out.
