THE COUNCIL tax increase for 2020/21 in Wokingham Borough Council will be 3.99%.
Councillors are expected to agree to the figure at a special budget meeting, held at the Shute End offices on Thursday, February 20.
Council leader Cllr John Halsall said that it gave him great pleasure to propose it at the start of a debate.
“Our central mission is to keep our residents safe, secure and happy and to provide the very best services that we can,” he told the chamber.
He also said: “The formulation of this year’s budget has involved a level of transparency and collaboration like no other.”
“The opposition in overview and scrutiny has been able to input their comments and concerns throughout the process, which has significantly benefited from this approach. Long may it continue.”
He also added that the council tax rise, at 1.99% plus a 2% adult social care element, was “below inflation” at 2.7%.
Wokingham’s town and parish councils charge a precept, which is collected on the borough’s council tax, in the same way that police and fire services is added on.
Cllr Halsall said: “It is instructive to note that whilst most town and parish precept increases are in line with inflation or below, liberal controlled Earley Town council is pushing their precept up by 10.4% making it up to the second highest precept in the Borough.
“Twyford Parish Council by 25% where two Liberal councillors hold sway.
“Wokingham Town is increasing its precept by 4.5%.
“Woodley town council’s precept of £112.88, the lowest precept for Woodley since 2008/9, but is still suffering from £114.65 precept they inherited in 2014/15, after 40 years I believe of Liberal administration. A too familiar tale.”
With children’s services, he said of the planned £2 million budget increase: “We are all, of course, acutely aware of the pressures we have faced in Children’s Services over the past years with an increase of 164% increase in children on protection plans and a 44% increase in children in care.
“This budget not only provides the resource needed to meet these unavoidable costs but provides investment to enable our community to receive a Children’s Services offer rated as Good for the first time.”
And for adult social services, “the revenue budget adds an additional £4.8 million for our increasingly elderly population”.
“Our proposed Capital Programme is a budget which invests £185m in Roads and Transportation, which includes tackling congestion on our roads. It is a budget which invests £50m on Climate Emergency. It is a budget which invests over £70m into improving services for our essential frontline of Children’s Services, Adult Social Care and Environmental facilities across the borough. It is also a Capital Programme that provides over £200m on regenerating our borough, providing homes and enabling the Council to generate valuable income streams from its expanding Commercial Agenda,” he added.
Cllr Halsall pledged that the council’s debt levels would peak in 2022/23, but then “decline rapidly thereafter”.
“This debt is not to fund spending but to purchase assets which remain and appreciate and generates much-needed income for services. We have not predicted any asset sales. One of our largest debt is due for our purchasing of our social housing, whose asset value is many times the debt we incurred and allows us to retain all the rents we collect from our residents to be used to maintain their homes to decent standards and finance additional social homes.”
And Cllr Halsall used his speech to tackle the issue of development.
“The only protected land is the small amount of green belt in the Northern parishes. The high retail price of houses compared to the average income within the Borough drives the government to instruct us to build some 800 homes per annum for the foreseeable future when the ONS growth of the Borough is expected to be around 450,” he said.
“I fundamentally disagree with the government’s approach and agree with our residents that we should be obliged to take a very much lower level of housing perhaps even lower that the ONS growth.”
Labour group leader Cllr Andy Croy raised a point of order at this point, stating that Cllr Halsall has not declared his directorship of the Campaign To Protect Rural Wokingham. However, Cllr Halsall said that this group was now dormant, and he was allowed to continue his speech.
Cllr Halsall then touched on the draft local plan: “It is based upon meeting a lower figure than the standard method, which we feel we can justify.
“It protects the Green Belt and the countryside by concentrating development in only a few places across the borough and proposes a new Garden town at Grazeley, which would be designed and built to cutting edge environmental standards with sustainable transport links into Reading and massive investment in facilities – schools, community centres, sporting and leisure facilities with huge swathes of green space opened up for public use.”
He added: “To not adhere to the NPPF and not having a plan means that we will have planning by appeal – developers putting houses where they want and government taking our planning department into special measures, as has happened in Liberal controlled South Oxfordshire. We will get more houses not less with no infrastructure. I do not like the situation we are in, but unless Parliament relents, we must do the best we can, with the tools we have.”
Cllr Halsall also reaffirmed the initial plans for the climate emergency green deal.
“The Council has published its first plan and this budget sees that plan put into action,” he said.
“In the future, this plan will be modified taking account of the measurement that we will be doing and the results of the actions that we are taking. It will, of course, introduce other actions that will come to light. This is very new to us and to others, but we are determined to be at the leading edge as I am sure residents would wish us to be. It’s too important an issue for our future and our children’s future.”
