Hello and Happy New Year!
I hope you’ve managed to rest over the festive season properly and, like me, are back in action with a spring in your step and bundles of energy as you head into the new year with hope, health and happiness.
I spent my time volunteering with the homeless charity Crisis, who set up for another year one of their Crisis at Christmas Day Centres over in Stratford. It was another rewarding opportunity to support those facing hardship and vulnerabilities.
Now, I’m focused on all things budgetary, following the publication of the Council’s draft 2026/27 Budget in December. Our “Creating the pathway to financial sustainability and delivering a Fairer Newham: 2026/27 Draft Budget Proposals” for the coming financial year shows how we are delivering for the people of Newham and delivering a legally balanced Budget plan for 2026/27.
Significantly, for the Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) period, we can present a surplus position of £13m and £15m respectively for the 2027/28 and 2028/29, and we have no need for further exceptional financial support from the government. All without raising Council Tax above the standard formula of 3% (plus the 2% social care levy), which means our Council Tax level for a Band D property will be among the lowest in outer London.
Next month we will set our Council Budget, staying true to the values of building a fairer Newham — one where every child has the best start in life, every family feels supported, and every resident can share in the opportunities that growth brings. You can read more about the Budget by clicking here.
Onto some other news. Back in July last year, the Care Quality Commission inspected our adult social care services, publishing their findings just before Christmas. First, the good news, and there's plenty of it: inspectors described our frontline staff as "kind, dedicated, and compassionate." They rated our safeguarding of vulnerable residents as "good" and highlighted the significant strides we've made in tackling inequality across the borough. This recognition is well-deserved, and I'm immensely proud of our teams. However, we missed an overall "good" rating by just one point because right now, we don’t have enough supported accommodation in the borough. While we've added 109 adult social care supported accommodation units over the past two years, with more on the way, it's still not enough to meet demand.
Missing that rating by such a slim margin is frustrating, particularly for the practitioners who work tirelessly for our most vulnerable residents. But it also sharpens our focus on what needs to happen next. That includes the development of an action plan to improve the experience of unpaid carers with the Council, which we’ll be publishing soon. If you have any ideas on how we can better support unpaid carers, we’d be keen to hear from you, and it’s personally really important to me as someone who has seen first-hand the dedication that unpaid carers show in their support for loved ones. Please email commissioning.assistant@newham.gov.uk to feed into our carers strategy.
Some further news, we’re now well into the first phase of offering weekly food waste recycling in Newham, and so far we’re off to a fantastic start: with residents across the 10% of households in Newham that are taking part in the pilot phase helping to recycle an incredible 44 tonnes of food waste in December alone!
A HUGE thank you to all of you who have been involved in helping us recycle food waste, protecting the environment and reducing costs to the Council. You can read more about the new food waste recycling service here.
With this time of year bringing a significant drop in the temperature, and Storm Goretti bringing snow, wind, and power outages to the UK, we’re working hard to keep residents safe.
For instance, we’ve already enacted our severe weather emergency protocol at the start of this week, and please help by reporting anyone you see sleeping rough – you can make a referral to StreetLink. If the person needs urgent medical attention or you believe they are under 18 years of age, please call 999.
We’ve also made sure that our dedicated Highways team are out across the borough, gritting the roads to keep them safe for all road users, and we’ll be keeping this gritting throughout the cold weather. You can read more about our work gritting roads here.
So, until next week, take good care.
Best wishes,
Rokhsana Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz OBE Follow what I am up to via X/Twitter: @rokhsanafiaz | 
