The financial position over the last couple years has been very difficult for many residents and for local businesses with inflation soaring to over 10%.
Although inflation has declined it remains stubbornly high at 7.8% and the outlook for many businesses and residents is causing them concern.
As an organisation, the council are also having to deal with the effects of inflation.
Inflation has added over £11m to the council’s budget this year, yet the government only gave Wokingham an extra £1.8m in the financial settlement last December. This continued lack of support from government makes it incredibly difficult to balance the council’s budgets.
These issues of struggling to balance budgets are common to the council, to many of our local businesses and to many residents. Some local business owners have told me that they fear for their survival in the coming months and years.
I know from conversations with businesses that they have real concerns about high inflation and increases in energy costs that in many cases have doubled over the last two years. Retailers are worried that the increases in mortgage rates since the Truss/Kwarteng/Redwood budget are costing residents up to an extra £500 a month when they come to remortgage for another two or three years.
This is £6,000 that each of these households is unable to spend in the local economy over the next 12 months. This massive reduction of local spending power is potentially extremely damaging to our smaller businesses, especially retailers and those in the hospitality sector.
On top of energy cost increases and mortgage increases many consumers will be thinking that inflation is higher than 7.8% because the reality we see every day is food inflation is still running at around 15% and has been for well over a year. This is very worrying for some families who are struggling to feed their families properly and trying to make ends meet.
But we all need to support our local traders, retailers, pubs, restaurants, and cafes as much as we can. Local support from all of us will be a huge benefit for these businesses.
Many of the people who work in them have become our friends and they are our neighbours. Extra business from us, the local residents of the borough could be a real help in keeping the business alive and keeping our friends in work.
We all need to do our part supporting local business through this economic downturn. This will help to ensure their survival and ultimately benefit our local communities.
Cllr Clive Jones is the executive member for Business and Economic development on Wokingham Borough Council
