What light through yonder chamber breaks? It is democracy and debate is the sun.
After nearly five years waiting, last week’s Full Council Budget meeting had the first steps on the road towards democratic debate.
First rate scrutiny
The Community and Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee gave councillors the chance to examine around 20% of Wokingham Borough Council’s (WBC’s) budget in some detail.
The Chief Financial Officer (CFO)’s presentation of the Capital budget in January was spread across three documents. Confusion reigned.
Fortunately, the chairman was able to intervene to keep everyone on the same page. Literally.
Some of the simplest questions to the CFO met with delay while he sorted through papers, all too frequently ending up without having the right information to hand, including when projects would start and finish.
The CFO’s plight (real or acted) seemed the exact opposite of the shopkeeper in that ‘Beattie Richard Wilson’ ad in the 1980’s. None of the facts in all of the documents.
Second rate numbers
Thanks to the Audit skills of a relatively new Lib Dem councillor, supported by her leader and party colleagues, discrepancies in the budget numbers were discussed with two of WBC’s senior finance officers on Monday last week.
This resulted in parts of the budget being re-stated, “due to casting anomalies”, just in time for Full Council.
Closer scrutiny of the third kind
On Wednesday last week, a different WBC scrutiny meeting questioned two senior staff members on WBC’s Community Vision and the corresponding Corporate Delivery Plan.
One councillor suggested the Community Vision be labelled the Council’s Vision, as its tone was “calculated to infuriate residents” while the Delivery Plan would be more acceptable if labelled as Strategic Aims as it “looked nothing like a plan”.
Councillors critiqued the contents for including a statement that success would look like “a self-sustaining garden town at Grazeley” as WBC’s Local Plan consultation on Grazeley hasn’t finished yet.
They were also unhappy with the two documents being brought to scrutiny the day before they were going to Full Council.
Breaking the fourth wall
Not once but twice last Thursday evening, a member of the public stood their ground and challenged the ruling group to account for WBC’s seeming inaction, indifference or aloofness on matters of significant public merit.
The second of these related to a question on the HRA (Housing Revenue Account), where the legality challenge implicit in the supplementary almost left the Exec Member for Finance spluttering. His eventual rebuttal of “if you can find an example of that and you bring it to me, I’m quite prepared to look at it” was met with an equally direct “I’ll email it to you tomorrow”.
Public scrutiny, by the public, for the public, done in public – surely not.
A borrower’s budget
Printed on Thursday afternoon, the re-stated budget was put forward at the Full Council meeting in the evening.
The Lib Dem Finance shadow’s speech was interrupted by an outburst from the Exec member for Finance. The verbals ended up with the mayor calling for order, asking the Tory frontbencher to allow his opponent to finish.
What the outburst didn’t disguise was a relentless rise in overall debt – from £335 million last April to £421 million this coming April, then on up to over £670 million in three year’s time.
The vision thing
With success still looking like “a self-sustaining garden town at Grazeley”, councillors were being asked to condone this utterly done deal in the Council’s Vision document.
As everyone in the chamber was acutely aware, the Local Plan consultation centres on a proposal for 15,000 houses at Grazeley and isn’t due to end until March.
So the leader proposed removing the Grazeley statement from the Vision, then voting on adopting the rest.
The last word
In an organisation struggling to find its way, the budget scrutiny is welcome. Likewise, WBC officers stepping up to understand, correct and re-publish discrepancies in the numbers.
It gives the hope that, after years of being a law unto themselves, behavioural reform at Shute End might be possible.
However, the ruling political group’s forcing through this borrower’s budget, together with ill-focused vision and dire delivery plan has left a sour note, along with a thoroughly discredited process for the new Local Plan.
The Acton Diet
Cllr Halsall’s behaviour and role as Leader was challenged in the middle of his speech to Full Council because he hadn’t declared his interests in a limited company, a Facebook page and a campaign to influence public opinion on housing.
After this point of order, he declared an interest in CPRW before going on to speak about the Local Plan for housing.
Last Friday, the day after the Full Council meeting, Companies House had a new entry claiming that his control of the Campaign to Protect Rural Wokingham Ltd ceased on July 1st 2018. However as of Monday this week, he was still a director, and the sole Facebook Team Member for CPRW, whose home page Latest News was last updated in Jan 2019 with a template for opposing development in the green belt. According to WBC’s LPU map, Cllr Halsall’s ward has over 97% of the greenbelt within the Borough.
