Savings and efficiencies

Very soon after his election on 2 May 2008, the Mayor implemented decisions that achieved savings of Ł5.3m on the GLA group budget for 2008-09. Further savings were made when setting the budget for 2009-10 and, when compared with the original budget for the previous year, expenditure has been reduced by Ł180.4m. The table below shows how these savings are distributed across the GLA group.

	2008-09 £m	2009-10 £m
GLA: Mayor of London	2.8	9.1
GLA: London Assembly	-	0.2
Metropolitan Police Authority	0.3	92.3
London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority	-	8.2
Transport for London	1.7	62.0
London Development Agency	0.5	8.6
Total	5.3	180.4

The decisions that produced these budget reductions are summarised below.

Decisions affecting the budget for 2008-09

Savings arose from the following:

Cancellation of The Londoner newspaper.
Saving: £2.9m
Cancellation of the ‘Beijing Bus’ - the previous administration committed Transport for London to spending £300,000 on this, of which £140,000 had already been spent. The Mayor cancelled the project and stopped all further spending on it.
Saving: £160,000
Closing down of GLA office in Venezuela and scaling down of other overseas offices.
Saving: £100,000
Income from the hire of London’s Living Room at City Hall has increased from £145,000 in 2007-08 to £167,000 in 2008-09 as a result of stopping the policy of allowing preferred groups and organisations to use it for free.
Saving: £20,000
Reduction in expenditure on GLA consultants - reducing from £4.7m in 2007-08 to £2.8m in 2008-09.
Saving: £1.9m
Ten delegates attended party conferences in 2008-09, at a total cost (including attendance, advertising, stands, etc.) of £9,000, compared with 19 delegates in 2007-08 at a cost of £43,000.
Saving: £34,000
Foreign travel costs for the Mayor’s office were reduced from £107,000 in 2007-08 to £30,000 in 2008-09, while the rest of the GLA reduced its costs from £102,000 to £28,000.
Saving: £151,000

Decisions affecting the budget for 2009-10

Full details of the budgeted savings for the Greater London Authority and each of its functional bodies can be found by following the links below.

Savings and Efficiencies - Appendices PDF
Savings and Efficiencies - Appendices RTF

Cancellation of ‘The Londoner’.
Saving: £3.1m
20 per cent reduction in the GLA’s Media and Marketing budget.
Saving: £700,000
Restructuring of the Mayor’s office and reduction in stakeholder programmes.
Saving: £1.7m
Organising for Delivery – a restructuring of the GLA aimed at ensuring that City Hall provides value for money (full year saving £3.5m).
Saving in 2009-10: £1.3m
Securing cost savings in the police forensic service by negotiating better deals with suppliers and improving internal business processes.
Saving: £10.6m
Reorganising administrative support functions to improve effectiveness and securing reductions in rents, ICT project and building maintenance costs at the Metropolitan Police.
Saving: £29m
Streamlining administrative and project support at the Fire Brigade to improve value for money.
Saving: £4.2m
Transport for London has begun a further major review of operating costs, focusing both on the control of overheads and further exploitation of efficiencies within its operations. The review has focused explicitly on identifying opportunities to reduce or remove operating cost from the business, with items prioritised for the initial phase focusing primarily on back-office and non-operational expenditure areas. The review has identified opportunities that could realise some £2.4bn net savings by 2017-18.
Saving in 2009-10: £62m
The LDA has introduced a more streamlined staffing structure enabling it to release resources to support priority projects such as the Mayor’s Economic Recovery plan.
Saving: £6.6m