WOKINGHAM’S Conservatives are campaigning on a platform of axing some of the changes proposed by the Liberal Democrat-led partnership: car parking price increases, the budget allocated for pothole fixing, and changes to the doorstep waste collection services.
But that’s not all the party is standing for.
The party’s leader, Cllr Pauline Jorgensen, says they are keen to make travelling around Wokingham easier, for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.
“We believe in trying to deal with congestion, and we are very keen to promote more, safe, off-road cycleways and paths,” she says. “We don’t want to shut roads or reduce the opportunities for people to get about their normal business.
“We’re very much a party of enabling people to do the right thing rather than punishing them.”
She says her administration had been working on initiatives such as smart traffic lights but this had been “scrapped by the Liberals”.
The party would get the local plan, which determines housing plans, finished. It had been started by the Conservatives but had to be redrawn after the Ministry of Defence rejected plans for Grazeley. The Liberal Democrats have not produced their first draft yet.
“I’ve been working very closely with our local MPs to try and protect the borough as much as possible from development and I’m very, very keen to reduce the housing numbers further,” she says. “We’re happy to have some development, but it needs to be in the right place and sustainable.
“The Liberals have kicked it down the road and … they now look like they’re fighting like a bunch of rats in a sack to decide where the new development is going to be, which opens us up to planning by appeal.”
A key policy for the party is to put the right schools in the right places. Given the party was in charge of the borough’s education over the past 20 years, and led the move of Farley Hill Primary School and building a SEND school next to a motorway, isn’t this too little, too late?
“It’s a new thing for us,” Pauline says. “It’s come about largely from people being unable to get to their nearest school because it’s over subscribed. It creates congestion, and pupils can’t go to school with their friends.
“We need a longer-term strategic plan,” she adds. This would come from expert forecasters, to ensure it is properly mapped and take into account people coming in from outside the borough, such as people from Hong Kong and Ukraine, which is difficult to estimate.
Last May, the Conservatives lost six seats, taking the council to no overall control. A partnership agreement – which the Conservatives call a coalition – saw the Liberal Democrats take charge.
How have the Conservatives found the transition to opposition? Pauline says it has been an interesting time.
“It’s quite a change, but I think I’ve got used to it,” says Pauline. “I’ve used the period to reflect on the various policies we’ve got. I’ve been very active on social media, and been out and about a lot listening to people and trying to persuade them that the other parties need to do what residents want them to do.”
Her opposite number in the Liberal Democrats says that they offered chairs of the various council committees to the Conservatives. So why didn’t the party take them?
“We were fundamentally not part of the partnership,” Pauline says, adding that the two independent councillors left it before the campaign trail started because they felt they were being taken for granted, not being given information, and being bullied.
“We didn’t want to be part of that. We want to be part of an organisation that is listening to residents, trying to solve problems and bring their arguments back to the council. We have, however, been active on scrutiny, we’ve been very constructive, and produced ideas.”
She adds that her party have been happy to support the Lib Dems and Labour when they agreed with them.
Last summer, Wokingham Today revealed a secret document that unveiled their plans to be disruptive in council meetings.
Pauline says she won’t comment on leaks, but asked voters to judge the party on their activities: “we’ve behaved very well in council meetings, we haven’t tried to disrupt things. We have used standing orders to make points for residents when they need to be made”.
Her party, she adds, wasn’t the one calling for changes to council rules to control debate in the chamber: “We use the rules to make sure we represent residents”.
There are some policies that her party have been critical of: proposals to increase car parking fees, scrap weekly waste collections, and to freeze the budget for road maintenance.
“Car parking is a big issue in Wokingham town,” she says, “There are quite a few local employers who open on a Sunday and now won’t. Their apprentices will lose a massive amount of their income because of the new charges.”
She says her party didn’t increase fees due to the covid pandemic, and trying to protect businesses.
“If you put up car parking too much, you will end up with empty premises and people without jobs. That’s not what we want.
“What we’ve said is this year we would not increase car parking if we get in, but next year we will look at the economic environment and we will probably increase it by the rate of inflation, presuming the economic environment and the state of the shops is good.”
Before she became party leader, Pauline was the executive member for highways, so she understands the issues caused by potholes.
“The Liberal action of freezing the budget for road maintenance is completely ridiculous given the level of inflation. They’ve repaired less potholes this year that we did the year before,” she says, adding that saying not enough funding was coming from central government was “an excuse”.
“They’ve frozen expenditure on potholes, which suggests to me they’re not interested.”
In February, the Conservatives presented an alternative budget, which they say would have found £2.2 million in savings, some of which could have been diverted into road maintenance.
“We’ve pledged we wouldn’t touch front-facing services, so you can be sure that if you elect the Conservatives, you will have the same amount of money spent on schools and adult social care.”
But the chief financial officer’s verdict on their sums was that it would add a “sizeable risk” to the council’s finances. Is their budget reckless?
“I don’t think so,” says Pauline. “He said that because he hasn’t got all the detail … he had a week to look at it. Most of the data we used was provided by the finance officer in the first place, so we’re not making it up.
“We’ve run the budget for 20 years and we’ve got a lot of experience in delivering budgets that work for residents. I suggest it will be fine and people should give us the opportunity to prove that.”
The Conservatives want to keep the blue bag waste system, but the government is to announce a shake-up after the local elections. Surely pledging to keep the status quo is a folly?
Pauline says she is not convinced that leaked plans – suggesting households will have to pre-sort waste into seven bins – is entirely correct.
On Wokingham’s plans for wheelie bins, she says the Conservatives have been asking for a business case since last summer as part of the scrutiny process.
“The only thing it seems to do is there’s a vague view it might increase recycling. That’s not borne out of any data we’ve been given,” she says. “We still haven’t got the business case. We think there are other ways to increase recycling without penalising residents with piles of nappies that they might not want hanging around the house for two weeks.
“If Liberals thought it was such a good idea, why didn’t they give residents the options of retaining the existing system when they consulted? They didn’t because they knew what the answer would be.”
As to why people should vote Conservative on May 4, she says: “Wokingham borough is a great place to live and I want it to stay that way.
“It’s not perfect however, and there are things that we need to fix.
“Residents deserve a group of councillors that will actually listen to them and do the right things.
“I want to deliver the best I possibly can for the residents of the borough.
“We need to get on and get the local plan sorted out.
“I’m very, very keen to make sure that we listen to residents and make the changes that need to be made. I’ve been very detailed in the manifesto – I noticed some of the party’s manifestos really don’t say anything.
“We’ve been really detailed, and I can promise people that what we’ve put in the manifesto we will deliver given the chance.”
