Every year the mayor sets out how he will spend £17billion of Londoners’ money.

It’s his chance to show how he will address people’s concerns and invest in the capital’s future.

Sadly the budget that Boris Johnson announced last week does nothing of the sort.

After years of rising transport costs and a grossly diminished police force – two of the most serious issues facing London today – we’ve seen nothing but the same from the Mayor of London.

Londoners wanted to see a budget which tackles these concerns head on.

In its absence it was down to Assembly Members to put forward alternative proposals which address the worries facing Londoners.

That is exactly what my colleagues and I sought to do when we supported two amendments to the Mayor’s 2015/16 Budget that would have put an extra 1,025 police officers on London’s streets and cut transport fares by 2.5 per cent.

Funding an extra 1,025 police officers on London’s streets would mean providing the equivalent of 33 additional officers for every borough in London.

This proposal comes amid concerns that violent crime in London has risen by 24 per cent in just the last year.

These extra police officers would hugely empower boroughs to tackle this worrying trend as well as putting more officers out on the streets.

It’s that visible policing which has suffered as a result of the mayor’s cuts to the police force. The Metropolitan Police Service’s own “Confidence Comparator” figures show that almost half of Londoners now believe the police do not have a visible presence on the street.

This should come as no surprise as many local people have become uneasy with the Mr Johnson’s cuts to local neighbourhood policing, which have contributed to the loss of 4,333 uniformed officers across London since 2010.

The latest available statistics make for worrying reading in boroughs such as Westminster where there are now 20 per cent fewer police officers and 56 per cent fewer PCSOs in the local streets since the current government came into power.

Our proposal of 33 additional police officers would help to start reversing these cuts as Londoners tell us they want.

The other main focus of our alternative was to offer respite for the Londoners who faced the seventh year of fare increases under Boris Johnson this January.

To do this I supported proposals which would have cut travel fares by 2.5 per cent to 2014 levels.

Despite us identifying ample funding to keep fares down (mainly from the Mr Johnson’s miscalculations and Transport for London underspends) he has consistently allowed fares to rise faster than wages.

Recent polling shows that 76 per cent of Londoners now believe that fares are “too high” and, following the 40 per cent rise in ticket costs since Boris Johnson came to power, it is essential to offer some respite to those struggling to cope with the costs of commuting.

Cutting fares back 2.5 per cent to 2014 levels would help reduce pressure on those anxious that their pay cheques will not stretch to cover Mr Johnson’s constant fare hikes.

It would put some £98 million back into the pockets of Londoners.

As with anything, these new police officers and the fares cut need to be funded.

While the Mayor of London’s tokenistic council tax cut would save the capital’s households seven pence a week, cutting fares to last year’s levels would put far more back in the pocket of the average commuter; a saving of a penny a day for each household or extra police on our streets and a much-needed cut to transport fares.

It’s clear which would leave most people in west central London feeling safer and better off.

Though blocked at last week’s meeting, Mr Johnson has the opportunity to revisit the proposals later this month when the London Assembly comes together for a final vote on the budget.

If he really valued the opinions of Londoners Boris Johnson would listens to our proposals and help Londoners concerned about the cuts to police numbers and the rising cost of commuting.

Published in West End Extra, 6 February