By Cllr Imogen Shepherd-Dubey
Last week, we presented our Wokingham Borough Council budget for next year. It was the result of a yearlong process of negotiation and review to produce a balanced and achievable plan, which had also been presented in detail over several meetings to our cross-party Community and Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
We have had to make some difficult choices since the Liberal Democrats took over the administration of the council last May.
Our main focus has been to ensure a balanced budget, we have done this.
This has been achieved against a background of rising costs everywhere and inflation at over 10% and increased demand for our services, especially in children’s services and adult social care.
You don’t have to look very far to see what is happening when a council’s budgets are not controlled properly. Slough Borough Council has recently gone bankrupt, services are now being forcibly cut by government commissioners and their Council Tax is going up by a massive 9.99%.
The result that we have achieved here in Wokingham is a compassionate and balanced budget that provides extra funding and support for people on the lowest incomes.
It provides funding and continued support for buses and better walking and cycling infrastructure. There is urgently needed extra funding for our schools so that much-needed new places can be found for our children.
Our budget is forward-looking, financially sound and compassionate.
There were some interesting responses to this from the Conservative opposition members, not to mention a very surprising lack of understanding from them about Council Finances. Firstly, they seem to misunderstand what earmarked reserves are for, how they are managed and when they can or can’t be used. Then, right at the last minute, they proposed a budget amendment that had not been seen by anyone else and certainly had not been through the rigours of our cross-party scrutiny processes.
Unfortunately for them, it demonstrated that they could not add up the costs of not increasing car parking charges as well as asking us to remove items that were not in the budget anyway?
Their budget amendment also seemed to assume that ringfenced funding from developers and government grants could just be used elsewhere in the Council, when of course they should know this is not always possible?
We obviously could not accept their unsafe amendment and I am pleased to say that the first liberal Democrat budget for 20 years passed, unamended.
I was personally very sad to hear other criticisms, most bizarrely in our approach to tackling poverty where we are consulting with local charities and officers on how best to spend the £250,000 of money we have allocated to help our residents who are experiencing severe financial difficulties.
The Conservatives said they would not be dishing this out, they would be putting this money back in the pockets of local taxpayers. In essence, they would not be supporting those who were struggling in this cost-of-living crisis. Can you believe how uncaring the Conservatives are?
We are currently in the process of restoring our depleted general fund reserves following the raid on them by the Conservatives last year.
While there are still many things, we need to fix about Wokingham Borough Council, I do feel that our journey is well on the way and heading in the right direction.
Cllr Imogen Shepherd-Dubey is the executive member for finance, and Lib Dem ward member for Emmbrook
