By Cllr Imogen Shepherd-Dubey
The state of our Council Finances are in a very serious position, which I know has been widely touched upon by many of my fellow councillors here, so let me spend a little time talking about another part of my role.
It is not often that you see a Council willing to limit its own Administration, but that is what we have been recently trying to do at Wokingham Borough Council.
Every Council has its own Constitution that sets out the rules of engagement, procedures, the methods of how its meetings should operate and the behaviour of its councillors and officers.
You can be forgiven for thinking that it is a very dry subject, but it wasn’t at our Council meeting on October 20. Let me explain why…
The constitution is managed, amended, and routinely updated by the councillors with recommendations being made to our full council via the Constitution Review Working Group, which is cross-party and I chair it.
At our last Council meeting, we saw Councillors voting against removing a racist stereotype being used to describe unlawful encampments in our parks and play areas.
Some councillors explained that they felt that the change did not go far enough, even though it was clearly an improvement.
However, all of the Conservative group gave no explanation for their decision to vote against this item, and neither did they suggest an amendment to fix it.
We also bizarrely saw our Conservative Councillors voting against the amendments that were proposed by the planning committee – even though some of them sit on the planning committee and voted in support of the changes when they were raised at our planning committee initially.
Why was no objection to these amendments made or discussed there?
Very odd behaviour.
So back to finances – the big hole in our budget is not going away and no amount of optimistic thinking is going to change it.
Inflation is a killer, covid is still having an impact and I don’t believe our government is going to help local Councils, most of whom are having similar problems to Wokingham Borough Council.
The only thing that is going to work is grown-up decisions – involving making painful savings, increasing fees and tightening our belts.
No Councillor became a Councillor thinking that they would have to be doing this, but I know we will all remain committed to prioritising supporting the most vulnerable and those in the most need.
Cllr Imogen Shepherd-DuBey is the executive member for finance, and ward member for Emmbrook on Wokingham Borough Council
