FROM THE CHAMBER: Making difficult and challenging decisions

Being a Councillor at Wokingham Borough Council means making difficult and often challenging decisions.

There isn’t the money and resources to do everything that we would really want to do for our residents and we have to prioritise where the money and the resources go. However, whenever there is a choice, I feel that we should always prioritise those with the greatest needs, such as the elderly, disabled and children in care or with special needs.

Because Wokingham is an area that is seen as having low levels of deprivation, compared to other councils we get very little funding from central government. We have very limited ability to raise more money and Central government takes most of our business rates gathered in the area. Nearly 70% of your Council Tax is spent on Children and vulnerable adults. I certainly don’t doubt we should be spending your money on those who need it most, but it leaves very little for grass cutting, libraries, road repairs and the other services that residents want to see.

We have been under continuous pressure to make savings and generate revenue and look to find better ways to manage the costs in some areas. Reducing wastage and costs and looking at ways of generating revenue is a constant task. This does include having to make less popular decisions about the services we offer and the fees we charge, but I hope residents can understand that not doing this, would mean taking this support from the people with the greater needs.

However, there are some positives and we have just issued our financial year end reports. This is the first year where I feel we are back on even keel, post Covid and the following economic crisis. It has been one our missions as Liberal Democrats to bring the Council’s reserves back to a sensible level and provide long term stability for Council and the services it provides. Reserves now back to a level we have not seen since before Covid. We have also reduced the Councils external borrowing by £10m this year, reducing the amount of interest we have to pay. I now feel we are back on track after a long recovery.

We have also secured grants to build better Cycling and Walking routes and have obtained some funding from Reading Borough Council for improving bus services at Sutton Seeds Roundabout. To improve people’s quality of life, but also to invest in things which will help us financially in the long term, we have got some additional funding for disabled people to adapt their homes we have bought a care home so that we can provide more places for people who can no longer manage to stay at home, and we have taken out a loan for more social housing for people who need support. And finally but very importantly, we have managed to find £240,000 so that we can start the project to build a new 6th Form centre at Emmbrook School earlier than planned.