By Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
With the Liberal Democrats having set out their budget for the coming year, I wanted to provide you with our positive vision of what the Conservatives would do if we were in charge of Wokingham Borough Council.
One of the first things we’d do on taking over is conduct a review of the Council’s current spending, rooting out all the wasted money and redirecting it towards delivering residents’ priorities.
We’ve already highlighted some of the glaring examples of how the Liberal Democrat administration is pouring away taxpayers’ money.
Council office space is sitting vacant, rather than being leased for an income or used to free other spaces, such as the old library site, for alternative uses.
Flats at Carnival Pool sitting empty and half-finished for a staggering 18 months, eroding all profit and doing nothing to help young people onto the housing ladder.
The Council receives grants for active travel, repairing potholes and pavements, we would spend this money on improving active travel and roads and footpaths for residents.
On highways and transport, a Conservative administration would reverse the Liberal Democrats’ hike in parking charges. We will increase spending on road and pavement repairs as we did when we had control.
On waste, the Conservatives would reinstate weekly waste collections that are being scrapped by the Liberal Democrats. We would also expand the range of items being recycled.
The Liberal Democrats’ plans for fortnightly bin collections are not efficient and are poor value for money for residents.
At the Budget Council meeting the Liberal Democrat Executive Member for Environment admitted that their new bin collections scheme was less efficient and that it would take longer to collect bins.
He said that under the new collections regime, set to start in the Summer, “it’s physically impossible to empty seventy thousand wheeled bins in one week” unlike the current collections system which sees all rubbish and recycling collected in the Borough weekly.
Under the Liberal Democrats’ plans, the bin lorry will still visit your house every week but it will take less of your waste. Cost savings are not guaranteed, they are based on assumptions that people will change their behaviour.
We believe the way to encourage people to recycle more is to provide greater opportunities to do so, rather than simply reducing the number of times household waste is picked up. We believe most people want to do the right thing and recycle and we want to provide more opportunities for them to do that.
There will also be no reduction in public litter bins under a Conservative administration.
Schools and health and social care are some of the biggest areas of spending for the Council. We delivered Bohunt School, the first new school in the Borough for 50 years.
Last year, the Liberal Democrat administration failed to complete the Bohunt School expansion, allowing costs to mount and leaving parents, pupils and staff in a state of limbo. We are committed to expanding the school providing a new Sixth Form and extra places. We will also work with local businesses to increase apprenticeship places.
More Council-supported care home beds will be created and we will do more to work with the NHS to increase GP and dental practice services.
Above everything else, we will listen to residents.
Your views and concerns have fallen on deaf ears under the Liberal Democrats, but we are committed to ensuring that your priorities are our priorities.
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen is the leader of Wokingham Conservatives and Wokingham Borough Council ward member for Hillside
