Country Show comeback? Lib Dems pitch scaled-down community revival in alternative budget

The battle over Lambeth’s 2026/27 budget has found its most potent symbol in the future of the Lambeth Country Show.

After Labour confirmed that this year’s Lambeth Country Show will not go ahead — and with no clear commitment to restore it in its previous form — the Liberal Democrats have placed the event at the heart of their alternative budget, promising to bring it back in a scaled-down, community-led format. In political terms, it is a sharp contrast. In cultural terms, it is significant.

The Lib Dem proposal sets aside £250,000 in 2028/29 to reinstate the Country Show as a simpler, non-commercial event. The idea is not to replicate the large performance stages and infrastructure-heavy model that has defined recent editions, nor to lean on the commercial cross-subsidy arrangements that proved controversial.

Instead, they envisage a return to what they describe as the show’s roots: craft stalls, food traders, community groups, costume parades, horticultural competitions and the gloriously eccentric wonky vegetable displays that long predate the era of major festival tie-ins.

Labour has framed the cancellation as a regrettable but necessary casualty of Lambeth’s financial reality. The council remains reliant on substantial government Exceptional Financial Support and continues to manage a structural deficit against the backdrop of depleted reserves and rising demand pressures.

In that context, discretionary events are vulnerable. The Lib Dem response is that “discretionary” is a political choice. A smaller show, they argue, would preserve a 50-year civic institution without pretending the borough can afford business as usual.

The Country Show is only one element of a fully costed alternative budget that the Lib Dem Group insists is balanced over three years.

Their plan identifies £1.84 million in additional savings and income across the period and reallocates the same amount to new or restored spending commitments. They do not attempt to rewrite Lambeth’s overall financial envelope. Instead, they reshape what happens inside it.

The largest projected saving comes from shared back-office services. The Lib Dems argue that Lambeth should not duplicate administrative functions that could be pooled with neighbouring boroughs.

They model a 2 per cent reduction in projected expenditure by 2029/30, delivering £1.147 million in savings over the medium term.

The statutory Section 151 officer considers the assumption reasonable but notes the obvious caveat: it depends on other councils agreeing to participate. It is, in other words, a credible efficiency proposal that requires political cooperation beyond Lambeth’s borders.

More immediately bankable is the proposal to cut councillors’ Special Responsibility Allowances, saving £216,800 in 2026/27. The Lib Dem plan would reduce the Cabinet by three posts and scrap paid deputy cabinet, vice-chair and policy lead roles.

In a council where a substantial proportion of Labour councillors receive additional allowances, this is both a financial and philosophical statement.

Labour’s model concentrates political leadership across a wide structure of remunerated roles; the Lib Dem alternative argues that political overhead should shrink alongside officer restructuring.

Enforcement also features prominently. The Lib Dem budget proposes charging operators for badly parked e-bikes and e-scooters, using existing Highways Act powers to impound obstructive vehicles and recover costs.

The scheme is projected to raise £100,000 annually from 2027/28, matched by enforcement expenditure. It is framed less as a revenue-raising tool and more as a behavioural correction mechanism in response to mounting complaints about pavement obstructions.

Fly-tipping fines would rise further, with the maximum penalty increased to £1,200 and the early payment rate lifted proportionally to £750. The projected £183,000 income over two years would be recycled directly into surveillance, enforcement and borough-wide “mega-skip days”.

The finance officer flags the inherent risk: if deterrence works, revenue falls. The Lib Dem counter-argument is that the policy’s objective is cleaner streets, not fine income.

Elsewhere, savings are sought through a push toward digital billing, with a targeted campaign to increase uptake of electronic council tax and other communications, reducing printing and postage costs.

A Late Night Levy on premises selling alcohol after midnight would bring in a modest sum, part of which would fund extended noise response hours, community safety patrols and enhanced street cleaning in night-time economy hotspots.

The money raised is redirected into visible neighbourhood services. Half of Labour’s proposed £702,000 cut to the parks budget would be reversed, restoring £350,000 over two years.

The Lib Dem argument is that parks are not optional extras but essential green infrastructure for health, biodiversity and climate resilience.

After Labour reduced the library budget by £1 million this year, the alternative budget restores £152,000 to the book fund over two years, returning stock investment to its 2023/24 level. It is not a wholesale undoing of the cut, but a targeted attempt to protect the core offer.

Public toilets, long a quiet source of frustration in the borough, also receive attention. The Lib Dem plan commits revenue support to revitalise the Community Toilet Scheme and capital funding for two specialist accessible facilities.

The alternative budget also funds a low-mileage parking permit discount scheme, baby boxes for families on council tax support, an LGBT+ care support officer to improve safeguarding in adult social care settings, and a maternal health survey aimed at addressing disparities in outcomes for Black and ethnic minority women.

In the Housing Revenue Account, the Lib Dems propose a new urgent repairs triage team, funded through projected efficiencies, to reduce repeat contractor visits and improve compliance with Awaab’s Law.

Alongside the revenue measures sits £6.1 million in additional capital investment, including ultra-rapid EV charging hubs, extra highways funding, expanded tree planting, Libraries of Things in deprived wards and improved toilet facilities.

Funding would come from grants, reprioritised schemes and borrowing. Labour’s capital programme, by contrast, has paused or scaled back several projects amid financial pressures.

The thematic contrast between the two budgets is clear. Labour’s proposals are framed around fiscal containment and risk management within a precarious medium-term outlook. Lambeth Labour got itself into this mess, and is having to make cuts to get itself out of it.

The Lib Dem alternative accepts the same overall financial constraints but reshuffles priorities toward neighbourhood services, environmental investment and political cost-cutting. Both are balanced on paper. They simply answer the question of “what matters most” differently.

None of this changes the arithmetic at Full Council. Labour’s commanding majority means its budget will pass, whipped through without dissent. The Lib Dem and Green alternatives will be debated, voted down and filed away.

Yet with local elections only months away, these documents are more than procedural exercises. They are manifestos in miniature.

Labour presents itself as the steward of financial stability in austere times. The Lib Dems present themselves as custodians of civic life within constraint.

The Country Show may not return this year. But as a political metaphor for the choices facing Lambeth, it has already taken centre stage.