By Cllr Clive Jones
An overarching theme that connects many of the things that the new administration at Wokingham Borough Council is pursuing can be summed up in one word – partnership.
Faced with so many challenges, partnership is more necessary than ever.
We need to build up a good working relationship between councillors and council officers, based on mutual respect and understanding of their respective roles as elected representatives and professionals with a long-term perspective.
A sense of partnership is vital to making this relationship fruitful for you, the people whom the council is here to serve.
Partnership also characterises the way we want to approach the political management of the council. As I have said before, no one party has a monopoly on good ideas; we want to call on the talents, experience and knowledge of all councillors who are willing to work collaboratively on matters on which the political parties are in broad agreement. There are many more such matters of broad agreement than party political point-scoring might suggest.
Partnership is still more important in the way the council leadership works with those outside the offices and council chamber at Shute End.
We need to enlist the support of other councils facing similar challenges to our own; the more voices pressing central government to change tack on matters such as the unfair and excessive housing allocation and the potentially astronomical costs of social care, the more likely the message is to get through.
We are also reaching out to the borough’s four MPs, to secure their support in our lobbying of government.
We need to engage in a spirit of partnership with the borough’s town and parish councils. We often have common objectives, yet our relationship has not always been as productive as it should have been. We would like to change that.
Town and parish councils are full of people with a great stock of knowledge and a real passion for the local community. We must call much more effectively than we have done on the grassroots expertise and enthusiasm of our town and parish councils to help us make the borough a better place to live, work and do business in.
That leads me naturally to some other vital partnerships.
The borough council is already engaging with the voluntary sector; the work with bodies such as Citizens Advice Wokingham is vital to helping many people in difficulties. We want to build on the good start made and deepen the borough council’s relationship with the voluntary sector. Again, there is so much knowledge, experience, and good will that we want to harness to make things better.
Partnership with local businesses is crucial to local prosperity. The council needs to engage more with our businesses, especially the small and medium-sized businesses that are the life blood of many of our communities.
We need to listen to what businesses need and do all we can to help them to prosper and offer secure and high-quality employment opportunities for our residents.
All these different kinds of partnership can help us to make things better for you, the people of the borough. But we want you not just to benefit from partnership working but also to be part of the partnership.
We welcome your ideas on how the council might better serve the community. We may not always be able to pursue those ideas – financial or legal restraints may make it not possible to put some good ideas into practice – but we want you to be involved in the conversation about how we build a better borough.
It’s you, as I’ve said many times before, that we are here to serve.
Cllr Clive Jones is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and ward member for Hawkedon
